ent a strange notion glimmered
through his brain that he was the identical Peter who had concealed
the gold, and ought to know whereabout it lay. This, however, he had
unaccountably forgotten.

"Well, Mr. Peter!" cried Tabitha, on the garret stairs. "Have you torn
the house down enough to heat the teakettle?"

"Not yet, old Tabby," answered Peter, "but that's soon done, as you
shall see." With the word in his mouth, he uplifted the axe, and laid
about him so vigorously that the dust flew, the boards crashed, and in
a twinkling the old woman had an apron full of broken rubbish.

"We shall get our winter's wood cheap," quoth Tabitha.

The good work being thus commenced, Peter beat down all before him,
smiting and hewing at the joints and timbers, unclenching spike-nails,
ripping and tearing away boards, with a tremendous racket from morning
till night. He took care, however, to leave the outside shell of the
house untouched, so that the neighbors might not suspect what was
going on.

Never, in any of his vagaries, though each had made him happy while it
lasted, had Peter been happier than now. Perhaps, after all, there was
something in Peter Goldthwaite's turn of mind which brought him an
inward recompense for all the external evil that it caused. If he were
poor, ill-clad, even hungry and exposed, as it were, to be utterly
annihilated by a precipice of impending ruin, yet only his body
remained in these miserable circumstances, while his aspiring soul
enjoyed the sunshine of a bright futurity. It was his nature to be
always young, and the tendency of his mode of life to keep him so.
Gray hairs were nothing--no, nor wrinkles nor infirmity; he might look
old, indeed, and be somewhat disagreeably connected with a gaunt old
figure much the worse for wear, but the true, the essential Peter was
a young man of high hopes just entering on the world. At the kindling
of each new fire his burnt-out youth rose afresh from the old embers
and ashes. It rose exulting now. Having lived thus long--not too long,
but just to the right age--a susceptible bachelor with warm and tender
dreams, he resolved, so soon as the hidden gold should flash to light,
to go a-wooing and win the love of the fairest maid in town. What
heart could resist him? Happy Peter Goldthwaite!

Every evening--as Peter had long absented himself from his former
lounging-places at insurance offices, news-rooms, and book-stores, and
as the honor of his company was