to have become of my niece?"

"Eloped."

"And with whom?"

Van Staats of Kinderhook stretched an arm towards the open ocean, and
again nodded. The Alderman mused a moment; and then he chuckled, as if
some amusing idea had at once gotten the better of his ill-humor.

"Come, come, Patroon," he said, in his wonted amicable tone, when
addressing the lord of a hundred thousand acres, "this business is like a
complicated account, a little difficult till one gets acquainted with the
books, and then all becomes plain as your hand. There were referees in the
settlement of the estate of Kobus Van Klinck, whom I will not name; but
what between the handwriting of the old grocer, and some inaccuracy in the
figures, they had but a blind time of it until they discovered which way
the balance ought to come; and then by working backward and forward, which
is the true spirit of your just referee, they got all straight in the end.
Kobus was not very lucid in his statements, and he was a little apt to be
careless of ink. His leger might be called a book of the black art; for it
was little else than fly-tracks and blots, though the last were found of
great assistance in rendering the statements satisfactory. By calling
three of the biggest of them sugar-hogsheads, a very fair balance was
struck between him and a peddling Yankee who was breeding trouble for the
estate; and I challenge, even at this distant day, when all near interests
in the results may be said to sleep, any responsible man to say that they
did not look as much like those articles as any thing else. Something they
must have been, and as Kobus dealt largely in sugar, there was also a
strong moral probability that they were the said hogsheads. Come, come,
Patroon; we shall have the jade back again, in proper time. Thy ardor gets
the better of reason; but this is the way with true love, which is none
the worse for a little delay Alida is not one to balk thy merriment; these
Norman wenches are not heavy of foot at a dance, or apt to go to sleep
when the fiddles are stirring!"

With this consolation, Alderman Van Beverout saw fit to close the
dialogue, for the moment. How far he succeeded in bringing back the mind
of the Patroon to its allegiance, the result must show; though we shall
take this occasion to observe again, that the young proprietor found a
satisfaction in the excitement of the present scene, that, in the course
of a short and little diversified life, he had ne