is head. "Look out here, Peter!"

Peter looked, and saw his old partner, Mr. John Brown, on the opposite
sidewalk, portly and comfortable, with his furred cloak thrown open,
disclosing a handsome surtout beneath. His voice had directed the
attention of the whole town to Peter Goldthwaite's window, and to the
dusty scarecrow which appeared at it.

"I say, Peter!" cried Mr. Brown, again; "what the devil are you about
there, that I hear such a racket whenever I pass by? You are repairing
the old house, I suppose, making a new one of it? Eh?"

"Too late for that, I am afraid, Mr. Brown," replied Peter. "If I make
it new, it will be new inside and out, from the cellar upward."

"Had not you better let me take the job?" said Mr. Brown,
significantly.

"Not yet," answered Peter, hastily shutting the window; for ever since
he had been in search of the treasure he hated to have people stare at
him.

As he drew back, ashamed of his outward poverty, yet proud of the
secret wealth within his grasp, a haughty smile shone out on Peter's
visage with precisely the effect of the dim sunbeams in the squalid
chamber. He endeavored to assume such a mien as his ancestor had
probably worn when he gloried in the building of a strong house for a
home to many generations of his posterity. But the chamber was very
dark to his snow-dazzled eyes, and very dismal, too, in contrast with
the living scene that he had just looked upon. His brief glimpse into
the street had given him a forcible impression of the manner in which
the world kept itself cheerful and prosperous by social pleasures and
an intercourse of business, while he in seclusion was pursuing an
object that might possibly be a phantasm by a method which most people
would call madness. It is one great advantage of a gregarious mode of
life that each person rectifies his mind by other minds and squares
his conduct to that of his neighbors, so as seldom to be lost in
eccentricity. Peter Goldthwaite had exposed himself to this influence
by merely looking out of the window. For a while he doubted whether
there were any hidden chest of gold, and in that case whether it was
so exceedingly wise to tear the house down only to be convinced of its
non-existence.

But this was momentary. Peter the Destroyer resumed the task which
Fate had assigned him, nor faltered again till it was accomplished. In
the course of his search he met with many things that are usually
found in the ruins of an o