nie and the doctor. In the present instance they
repaired to the doctor. There was at that time a little, dark, mouldy
man of medicine famous among the old wives of the Manhattoes for his
skill not only in the healing art, but in all matters of strange and
mysterious nature. His name was Dr. Knipperhausen, but he was more
commonly known by the appellation of the High German doctor.[4] To him
did the poor women repair for counsel and assistance touching the
mental vagaries of Wolfert Webber.

[Footnote 4: The same, no doubt, of whom mention is made in the history
of Dolph Heyliger.]

They found the doctor seated in his little study, clad in his dark
camblet robe of knowledge, with his black velvet cap, after the manner
of Boorhaave, Van Helmont, and other medical sages: a pair of green
spectacles set in black horn upon his clubbed nose, and poring over a
German folio that seemed to reflect back the darkness of his
physiognomy. The doctor listened to their statement of the symptoms of
Wolfert's malady with profound attention; but when they came to mention
his raving about buried money, the little man pricked up his ears.
Alas, poor women! they little knew the aid they had called in.

Dr. Knipperhausen had been half his life engaged in seeking the short
cuts to fortune, in quest of which so many a long lifetime is wasted.
He had passed some years of his youth in the Harz mountains of Germany,
and had derived much valuable instruction from the miners, touching the
mode of seeking treasure buried in the earth. He had prosecuted his
studies also under a travelling sage who united all the mysteries of
medicine with magic and legerdemain. His mind, therefore, had become
stored with all kinds of mystic lore: he had dabbled a little in
astrology, alchemy, and divination; knew how to detect stolen money,
and to tell where springs of water lay hidden; in a word, by the dark
nature of his knowledge he had acquired the name of the High German
doctor, which is pretty nearly equivalent to that of necromancer. The
doctor had often heard rumors of treasure being buried in various parts
of the island, and' had long been anxious to get on the traces of it.
No sooner were Wolfert's waking and sleeping vagaries confided to him,
than he beheld in them the confirmed symptoms of a case of
money-digging, and lost no time in probing it to the bottom. Wolfert
had long been sorely depressed in mind by the golden secret, and as a
family physician