Who
he was, or what became of him, nobody knew; all he could hear was,
that a party of lumbermen had, some years afterwards, found his house
amidst a second growth of young wood that wholly concealed it, and
that it contained his furniture, cooking utensils, and trunks, as he
had left them. Some supposed he had been devoured by bears or wolves;
others, that he had been lost in the woods; and some, that he had died
by his own hands.
"On hearing this, John went to examine his habitation, or the remains
of it, and he found that about four acres around it were covered with
the second growth, as it is called, which was plainly to be
distinguished from the forest, as the trees were not only not so large
or so old as the neighbouring ones, but, as is always the case, were
of a different description of wood altogether. On a careful inspection
of the spot where he found the money, it appeared that the wheel had
passed lengthways along an enormous old decayed pine, in the hollow of
which he supposed the money must have been hid; and when the tree
fell, the dollars had rolled along its centre fifty feet or more, and
remained there until the wood was rotten, and had crumbled into dust.
"There, Sir, there is my story: it is a true one, I assure you, for I
was present at the time. What do you think of it?"
"Well," sais I, "if he had never heard a rumour, nor had any reason to
suppose that the money had been hid there, why it was a singular
thing, and looks very much like a--"
"Like a what?" said she.
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