At length the appointed night arrived for this perilous undertaking.  Before Wolfert left his home he counselled his wife and daughter to go to bed, and feel no alarm if he should not return during the night.  Like reasonable women, on being told not to feel alarm, they fell immediately into a panic.  They saw at once by his manner that something unusual was in agitation; all their fears about the unsettled state of his mind were roused with tenfold force:  they hung about him entreating him not to expose himself to the night air, but all in vain.  When Wolfert was once mounted on his hobby, it was no easy matter to get him out of the saddle.  It was a clear starlight night, when he issued out of the portal of the Webber palace.  He wore a large napped hat tied under the chin with a handkerchief of his daughter’s, to secure him from the night damp, while Dame Webber threw her long red cloak about his shoulders, and fastened it round his neck.

The doctor had been no less carefully armed and accoutred by his housekeeper, the vigilant Frau Ilsy, and sallied forth in his camblet robe by way of surtout; his black velvet cap under his cocked hat, a thick clasped book under his arm, a basket of drugs and dried herbs in one hand, and in the other the miraculous rod of divination.

The great church clock struck ten as Wolfert and the doctor passed by the church-yard, and the watchman bawled in hoarse voice a long and doleful “All’s well!” A deep sleep had already fallen upon this primitive little burgh; nothing disturbed this awful silence, excepting now and then the bark of some profligate night-walking dog, or the serenade of some romantic cat.  It is true, Wolfert fancied more than once that he heard the sound of a stealthy footfall at a distance behind them; but it might have been merely the echo of their own steps echoing along the quiet streets.  He thought also at one time that he saw a tall figure skulking after them—­stopping when they stopped, and moving on as they proceeded; but the dim and uncertain lamp light threw such vague gleams and shadows, that this might all have been mere fancy.

They found the negro fisherman waiting for them, smoking his pipe in the stern of his skiff, which was moored just in front of his little cabin.  A pick-axe and spade were lying in the bottom of the boat, with a dark lanthorn, and a stone jug of good Dutch courage, in which honest Sam no doubt, put even more faith than Dr. Knipperhausen in his drugs.

Thus then did these three worthies embark in their cockleshell of a skiff upon this nocturnal expedition, with a wisdom and valor equalled only by the three wise men of Gotham, who went to sea in a bowl.  The tide was rising and running rapidly up the Sound.  The current bore them along, almost without the aid of an oar.  The profile of the town lay all in shadow.  Here and there a light feebly glimmered from some sick chamber, or from the cabin window of some vessel at anchor in the stream.  Not a cloud obscured the deep starry firmament, the lights of which wavered on the surface of the placid river; and a shooting meteor, streaking its pale course in the very direction they were taking, was interpreted by the doctor into a most propitious omen.