“Fiddle-stick with your Dutchmen!” cried the half-pay officer.  “The Dutch had nothing to do with them.  They were all buried by Kidd, the pirate, and his crew.”

Here a key-note was touched that roused the whole company.  The name of Captain Kidd was like a talisman in those times, and was associated with a thousand marvellous stories.

The half-pay officer was a man of great weight among the peaceable members of the club, by reason of his military character, and of the gunpowder scenes which, by his own account, he had witnessed.

The golden stories of Kidd, however, were resolutely rivalled by the tales of Peechy Prauw, who, rather than suffer his Dutch progenitors to be eclipsed by a foreign freebooter, enriched every spot in the neighborhood with the hidden wealth of Peter Stuyvesant and his contemporaries.

Not a word of this conversation was lost upon Wolfert Webber.  He returned pensively home, full of magnificent ideas of buried riches.  The soil of his native island seemed to be turned into gold-dust; and every field teemed with treasure.  His head almost reeled at the thought how often he must have heedlessly rambled over places where countless sums lay, scarcely covered by the turf beneath his feet.  His mind was in a vertigo with this whirl of new ideas.  As he came in sight of the venerable mansion of his forefathers, and the little realm where the Webbers had so long and so contentedly flourished, his gorge rose at the narrowness of his destiny.

“Unlucky Wolfert!” exclaimed he, “others can go to bed and dream themselves into whole mines of wealth; they have but to seize a spade in the morning, and turn up doubloons like potatoes; but thou must dream of hardship, and rise to poverty—­must dig thy field from year’s end to year’s end, and—­and yet raise nothing but cabbages!”

Wolfert Webber went to bed with a heavy heart; and it was long before the golden visions that disturbed his brain, permitted him to sink into repose.  The same visions, however, extended into his sleeping thoughts, and assumed a more definite form.  He dreamt that he had discovered an immense treasure in the centre of his garden.  At every stroke of the spade he laid bare a golden ingot; diamond crosses sparkled out of the dust; bags of money turned up their bellies, corpulent with pieces of eight, or venerable doubloons; and chests, wedged close with moidores, ducats, and pistareens, yawned before his ravished eyes, and vomited forth their glittering contents.

Wolfert awoke a poorer man than ever.  He had no heart to go about his daily concerns, which appeared so paltry and profitless; but sat all day long in the chimney-corner, picturing to himself ingots and heaps of gold in the fire.  The next night his dream was repeated.  He was again in his garden, digging, and laying open stores of hidden wealth.  There was something very singular in this repetition.  He passed another day of reverie, and though it was cleaning-day, and the house, as usual in Dutch households, completely topsy-turvy, yet he sat unmoved amidst the general uproar.