ou please," said mine host,
somewhat nettled; "but every body knows that the old governor buried a
great deal of his money at the time of the Dutch troubles, when the
English red-coats seized on the province. They say, too, the old
gentleman walks; aye, and in the very Same dress that he wears in the
picture which hangs up in the family house."

"Fudge!" said the half-pay officer.

"Fudge, if you please!--But didn't Corney Van Zandt see him at
midnight, stalking about in the meadow with his wooden leg, and a drawn
sword in his hand, that flashed like fire? And what can he be walking
for, but because people have been troubling the place where he buried
his money in old times?"

Here the landlord was interrupted by several guttural sounds from Ramm
Rapelye, betokening that he was laboring with the unusual production of
an idea. As he was too great a man to be slighted by a prudent
publican, mine host respectfully paused until he should deliver
himself. The corpulent frame of this mighty burgher now gave all the
symptoms of a volcanic mountain on the point of an eruption. First,
there was a certain heaving of the abdomen, not unlike an earthquake;
then was emitted a cloud of tobacco smoke from that crater, his mouth;
then there was a kind of rattle in the throat, as if the idea were
working its way up through a region of phlegm; then there were several
disjointed members of a sentence thrown out, ending in a cough; at
length his voice forced its way in the slow, but absolute tone of a man
who feels the weight of his purse, if not of his ideas; every portion
of his speech being marked by a testy puff of tobacco smoke.

"Who talks of old Peter Stuyvesant's walking?--puff--Have people no
respect for persons?--puff--puff--Peter Stuyvesant knew better what to
do with his money than to bury it--puff--I know the Stuyvesant
family--puff--every one of them--puff--not a more respectable family in
the province--puff--old standers--puff--warm householders--puff--none
of your upstarts--puff--puff--puff.--Don't talk to me of Peter
Stuyvesant's walking--puff--puff--puff--puff."

Here the redoubtable Ramm contracted his brow, clasped up his mouth,
till it wrinkled at each corner, and redoubled his smoking with such
vehemence, that the cloudly volumes soon wreathed round his head, as
the smoke envelopes the awful summit of Mount Etna.

A general silence followed the sudden rebuke of this very rich man. The
subject, however, was too