University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.
A description of the Owl-roost, with Mr. Jumble's ideas in relation
to Captain Kid's money.

For five mortal days I remained at home, chewing
the bone of reflection; and a hard bone it
was. On the sixth there came a villanous constable
with a—the reader may suppose what. I struck a
bargain with him, and he took his leave, and Julius
Cesar also, saddle, bridle, and all; whereby I
escaped an introduction to the nearest justice of the

peace. The next visit, I had good reason to apprehend,
would be from the sheriff; for, having
failed to pay up the interest on the mortgage, the
mortgagee had discoursed, and that in no very mysterious
strain, on the virtues of a writ of Venditioni
Exponas, or some other absurd and scoundrelly
invention of the lawyers. I was at my wits' end,
and I wished that I was a dog; in which case I
should have gone mad, and bitten the new post-master
and all his friends.

“Very well,” said I to myself; “the forty-acre
is no longer mine.” I clapped on my hat, and
walked into the open air, resolved to take a look at
it before the sheriff came to convince me it belonged
to some other person. As I passed from
the door, I looked up to the broken porch: “May
it fall on the head of my successor,” I said.

It was a summer eve,—a day in July; but a
raw wind blew from the northeast, and the air was
as chill as in November. I buttoned my coat, and
as I did so, took a peep at my elbows: I required
no second look to convince me that I was a poor
man.

The ruined meadows of which I have spoken,
lie on a little creek that makes in from the Delaware.
Their shape is the worst in the world, being
that of a triangle, the longest leg of which lies
on the water. Hence the expense of embanking
them is formidable,—a circumstance for which the
muskrats have no consideration. The apex of the
angle is a bog, lying betwixt two low hillocks, or

swells of ground, between which crawls a brook,
scarce deep enough to swim a tadpole, though an
ox may hide in the mud at the bottom. It oozes
from a turfy ledge or bar, a few feet higher than
the general level of the hollow, which terminates
above it in a circular basin of two acres in area.
This circular basin is verdant enough to the eye,
the whole surface being covered by a thick growth
of alders, arrow-wood, water-laurels, and other
shrubs that flourish in a swamp, as well as a bountiful
sprinkling of cat-tails on the edges. The soil
is a vegetable jelly; and how any plant of a pound
in weight could ever sustain itself on it, I never
was able to comprehend. It is thought to be the
nearest road to the heart of the Chinese empire;
to find which, all that is necessary to do is, to take
a plunge into it head foremost, and keep on until
you arrive at daylight among the antipodes.

The whole place has a solitary and mournful appearance,
which is to many made still more dreary
and even sepulchral by the appearance of a little
old church, built by the Swedes many a year ago,
but now in ruins, and the graveyard around it,
these being but a short distance off, and on the east
side of the hollow. The spot is remote from my
dwelling, and apparently from all others; nevertheless
there is a small farmhouse—it was once
mine—on a by-road, not many rods from the old
church. A path, not often trodden, leads from my
house to the by-road, and crosses the hollow by the
grassy ledge spoken of before. It is the shortest

path to the village, and I sometimes pursued it
when walking thither.

This lonesome spot had a very bad name in
our neighbourhood, and was considered to be
haunted. Its common name was the Owl-roost,
given it in consequence of the vast numbers of
these birds that perched, and I believe nested in
the centre of the swamp, where was a place
comparatively dry, or supposed to be so, for I believe
no one ever visited it, and a clump of trees
larger than those in other places. Some called the
place Captain Kid's Hole, after that famous pirate
who was supposed to have buried his money there,
as he is supposed to have buried it in a hundred
thousand other dismal spots along the different
rivers of America. Old Jim Jumble was a devout
believer in the story, and often tried his luck in digging
for the money, but without success; which
he attributed to the circumstance of his digging in
the daytime, whereas midnight was, in his opinion,
the only true time to delve for charmed treasure.
But midnight was the period when the ghosts came
down from the old graveyard to squeak about the
swamp; and I never heard of Jim being found in
that neighbourhood after nightfall. The truth is,
the owls never hear any one go by after dark without
saluting him with a horrible chorus of hooting
and screeching, that will make a man's hair rise on
his head; and I have been sometimes daunted by
them myself.

To this place I directed my steps; and being

very melancholy, I sat down at the foot of a beech-tree
that grew near the path. I thought of the
owls, and the ghosts, and of Captain Kid into the
bargain, and I marvelled to myself whether there
could be any foundation for the belief that converted
such nooks into hiding-places for his ill-gotten gold.
While I thought over the matter, I began to wish
the thing could be true, and that some good spirit
might direct me to the spot where the money lay
hid; for, sure enough, no one in the world had
greater necessity for it than I. I conned over the
many stories that old Jim had told me about the
matter, as well as all the nonsensical ceremonies
that were to be performed, and the divers ridiculous
dangers to be encountered by those who sought
the treasure; all which were mere notions that had
entered his absurd head, but which he had pondered
over so often and long, that he believed they had
been told him by others.

The great difficulty, according to his belief, and
a necessary preliminary to all successful operations,
was first to discover exactly the spot where
the treasure lay buried; and, indeed, this seemed to
be a very needful preliminary. The discovery was
to be made only by dreaming of the spot three
nights in succession. As to dreaming twice, that
was nothing: Jim had twenty times dreamed two
nights together that he had fallen upon the spot;
but upon digging it discovered nothing. Having
been so lucky as to dream of a place three successive
nights, then the proper way to secure the

treasure, as he told me, would be, to select a night
when the moon was at the full, and begin digging
precisely at twelve o'clock, saying the Lord's
prayer backwards all the time, till the money was
found. And here lay the danger; a single blunder
in the prayer, and wo betide the devotee! for the
devil, who would be standing by all the time, would
that moment pounce upon his soul, and carry it
away in a flame of brimstone.