As they were quite incapable of conceiving from Marion's description
anything of the spot, Mr. M'Murdie caused her to be taken out to the
Birky Brow in a cart, accompanied by Mr. Taylor and some hundreds of
the town's folks; but whenever she saw it, she said, "Aha, birkies!
the haill kintra's altered now. There was nae road here then; it gaed
straight ower the tap o' the hill. An' let me see--there's the thorn
where the cushats biggit; an' there's the auld birk that I ance fell
aff an' left my shoe sticking i' the cleft. I can tell ye, birkies,
either the deer's grave or bonny Jane Ogilvie's is no twa yards aff
the place where that horse's hind-feet are standin'; sae ye may howk,
an' see if there be ony remains."
The minister and M'Murdie and all the people stared at one another,
for they had purposely caused the horse to stand still on the very
spot where both the father and son had been found dead. They digged,
and deep, deep below the road they found part of the slender bones
and skull of a young female, which they deposited decently in the
church-yard. The family of the Sandisons is extinct, the Mysterious
Bride appears no more on the Eve of St. Lawrence, and the wicked
people of the great muckle village have got a lesson on divine justice
written to them in lines of blood.
THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER [1]
[Footnote 1: From _The Money-diggers_.]
_Washington Irving_ (1783-1859)
A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet
winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles
Bay, and terminating in a thickly wooded swamp or morass. On one side
of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land
rises abruptly from the water's edge into a high ridge, on which grow
a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. Under one of these
gigantic trees, according to old stories, there was a great amount of
treasure buried by Kidd the pirate. The inlet allowed a facility to
bring the money in a boat secretly, and at night, to the very foot of
the hill; the elevation of the place permitted a good lookout to be
kept that no one was at hand; while the remarkable trees formed good
landmarks by which the place might easily be found again. The old
stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the
money, and took it under his guardianship; but this, it is well known,
he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been
ill-gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to recover his
wealth; being shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to England, and
there hanged for a pirate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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