sentiments.
He often paused with his axe uplifted in the air, and said to himself,
"Peter Goldthwaite, did you never strike this blow before?" or "Peter,
what need of tearing the whole house down? Think a little while, and
you will remember where the gold is hidden." Days and weeks passed on,
however, without any remarkable discovery. Sometimes, indeed, a lean
gray rat peeped forth at the lean gray man, wondering what devil had
got into the old house, which had always been so peaceable till now.
And occasionally Peter sympathized with the sorrows of a female mouse
who had brought five or six pretty, little, soft and delicate young
ones into the world just in time to see them crushed by its ruin. But
as yet no treasure.

By this time, Peter, being as determined as fate and as diligent as
time, had made an end with the uppermost regions and got down to the
second story, where he was busy in one of the front chambers. It had
formerly been the state-bedchamber, and was honored by tradition as
the sleeping-apartment of Governor Dudley and many other eminent
guests. The furniture was gone. There were remnants of faded and
tattered paper-hangings, but larger spaces of bare wall ornamented
with charcoal sketches, chiefly of people's heads in profile. These
being specimens of Peter's youthful genius, it went more to his heart
to obliterate them than if they had been pictures on a church wall by
Michael Angelo. One sketch, however, and that the best one, affected
him differently. It represented a ragged man partly supporting himself
on a spade and bending his lean body over a hole in the earth, with
one hand extended to grasp something that he had found. But close
behind him, with a fiendish laugh on his features, appeared a figure
with horns, a tufted tail and a cloven hoof.

"Avaunt, Satan!" cried Peter. "The man shall have his gold." Uplifting
his axe, he hit the horned gentleman such a blow on the head as not
only demolished him, but the treasure-seeker also, and caused the
whole scene to vanish like magic. Moreover, his axe broke quite
through the plaster and laths and discovered a cavity.

"Mercy on us, Mr. Peter! Are you quarrelling with the Old Scratch?"
said Tabitha, who was seeking some fuel to put under the dinner-pot.

Without answering the old woman, Peter broke down a further space of
the wall, and laid open a small closet or cupboard on one side of the
fireplace, about breast-high from the ground. It contained