The party huddled together in a little crowd as
they repaired homeward, particularly when they passed a lonely
field where a man had been murdered, and even the sexton, who had
to complete his journey alone, though accustomed, one would think,
to ghosts and goblins, went a long way round rather than pass by
his own churchyard.
Wolfert Webber had now carried home a fresh stock of stories and
notions to ruminate upon. These accounts of pots of money and
Spanish treasures, buried here and there and everywhere about the
rocks and bays of these wild shores, made him almost dizzy.
"Blessed St. Nicholas!" ejaculated he, half aloud, "is it not
possible to come upon one of these golden hoards, and to make
oneself rich in a twinkling? How hard that I must go on, delving
and delving, day in and day out, merely to make a morsel of bread,
when one lucky stroke of a spade might enable me to ride in my
carriage for the rest of my life!"
As he turned over in his thoughts all that had been told of the
singular adventure of the negro fisherman, his imagination gave a
totally different complexion[1] to the tale.
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