University of Virginia Library

THE DEVIL
AND
TOM WALKER.

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. It was under one of these
gigantic trees, according to old stories, that Kidd
the pirate buried his treasure. 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 look out
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.

About the year 1727, just at the time when
earthquakes were prevalent in New-England,
and shook many tall sinners down upon their
knees, there lived near this place a meagre miserly
fellow of the name of Tom Walker. He
had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so
miserly that they even conspired to cheat each
other. Whatever the woman could lay hands
on she hid away: a hen could not cackle but
she was on the alert to secure the new-laid egg.

Her husband was continually prying about to
detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce
were the conflicts that took place about what
ought to have been common property. They
lived in a forlorn-looking house, that stood alone
and had an air of starvation. A few straggling
savin trees, emblems of sterility, grew near it;
no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no traveller
stopped at its door. A miserable horse,
whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a
gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet
of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of
pudding stone, tantalized and balked his hunger;
and sometimes he would lean his head over
the fence, look piteously at the passer by, and
seem to petition deliverance from this land of
famine. The house and its inmates had altogether
a bad name. Tom's wife was a tall termagant,
fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and strong
of arm. Her voice was often heard in wordy
warfare with her husband; and his face sometimes
showed signs that their conflicts were not
confined to words. No one ventured, however,
to interfere between them; the lonely wayfarer
shrunk within himself at the horrid clamour and
clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance,
and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a bachelor,
in his celibacy.

One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant
part of the neighbourhood, he took what he
considered a short cut homewards through the
swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill
chosen route. The swamp was thickly grown
with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of
them ninety feet high; which made it dark at
noon-day, and a retreat for all the owls of the
neighbourhood. It was full of pits and quagmires,
partly covered with weeds and mosses;
where the green surface often betrayed the traveller
into a gulf of black smothering mud;
there were also dark and stagnant pools, the
abodes of the tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water
snake, and where trunks of pines and hemlocks
lay half drowned, half rotting, looking like
alligators, sleeping in the mire.

Tom had long been picking his way cautiously

through this treacherous forest; stepping from
tuft to tuft of rushes and roots which afforded
precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or
pacing carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate
trunks of trees; startled now and then by the
sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking
of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some
solitary pool. At length he arrived at a piece of
firm ground, which ran out like a peninsula into
the deep bosom of the swamp. It had been one
of the strong holds of the Indians during their
wars with the first colonists. Here they had
thrown up a kind of fort which they had looked
upon as almost impregnable, and had used as a
place of refuge for their squaws and children.
Nothing remained of the Indian fort but a few embankments
gradually sinking to the level of the
surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part
by oaks and other forest trees, the foliage of
which formed a contrast to the dark pines and
hemlocks of the swamp.

It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom
Walker reached the old fort, and he paused there

for a while to rest himself. Any one but he
would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely
melancholy place, for the common people had
a bad opinion of it from the stories handed down
from the time of the Indian wars; when it was
asserted that the savages held incantations here
and made sacrifices to the evil spirit. Tom
Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled
with any fears of the kind.

He reposed himself for some time on the trunk
of a fallen hemlock, listening to the boding cry
of the tree toad, and delving with his walking
staff into a mound of black mould at his feet.
As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff
struck against something hard. He raked it out
of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull
with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay
before him. The rust on the weapon showed
the time that had elapsed since this death blow
had been given. It was a dreary memento of
the fierce struggle that had taken place in this
last foothold of the Indian warriors.

“Humph!” said Tom Walker, as he gave the
skull a kick to shake the dirt from it.

“Let that skull alone!” said a gruff voice.

Tom lifted up his eyes and beheld a great
black man, seated directly opposite him on the
stump of a tree. He was exceedingly surprised,
having neither seen nor heard any one approach,
and he was still more perplexed on observing, as
well as the gathering gloom would permit, that
the stranger was neither negro nor Indian. It
is true, he was dressed in a rude, half Indian
garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round
his body, but his face was neither black nor copper
colour, but swarthy and dingy and begrimed
with soot, as if he had been accustomed to toil
among fires and forges. He had a shock of
coarse black hair, that stood out from his head
in all directions; and bore an axe on his shoulder.

He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair
of great red eyes.

“What are you doing in my grounds?” said
the black man, with a hoarse growling voice.

“Your grounds?” said Tom, with a sneer;
“no more your grounds than mine: they belong
to Deacon Peabody.”

“Deacon Peabody be d—d,” said the stranger,
“as I flatter myself he will be, if he does
not look more to his own sins and less to his
neighbour's. Look yonder, and see how Deacon
Peabody is faring.”

Tom looked in the direction that the stranger
pointed, and beheld one of the great trees, fair
and flourishing without, but rotten at the core,
and saw that it had been nearly hewn through,
so that the first high wind was likely to below it
down. On the bark of the tree was scored the
name of Deacon Peabody. He now looked
round and found most of the tall trees marked
with the name of some great men of the colony,
and all more or less scored by the axe. The
one on which he had been seated, and which had
evidently just been hewn down, bore the name
of Crowninshield; and he recollected a mighty
rich man of that name, who made a vulgar display

of wealth, which it was whispered he had
acquired by buccaneering.

“He's just ready for burning!” said the black
man, with a growl of triumph. “You see I am
likely to have a good stock of firewood for winter.”

“But what right have you,” said Tom, “to
cut down Deacon Peabody's timber?”

“The right of prior claim,” said the other.
“This woodland belonged to me long before one
of your white-faced race poot foot upon the
soil.”

“And pray, who are you, if I may be so
bold?” said Tom.

“Oh, I go by various names. I am the Wild
Huntsman in some countries; the Black Miner
in others. In this neighbourhood I am known
by the name of the Black Woodsman. I am he
to whom the red men devoted this spot, and now
and then roasted a white man by way of sweet
smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been
exterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself
by presiding at the persecutions of quakers

and anabaptists; I am the great patron and
prompter of slave dealers, and the grand master
of the Salem witches.”

“The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake
not,” said Tom, sturdily, “you are he commonly
called Old Scratch.”

“The same at your service!” replied the
black man, with a half civil nod.

Such was the opening of this interview, according
to the old story, though it has almost too
familiar an air to be credited. One would think
that to meet with such a singular personage in
this wild lonely place, would have shaken any
man's nerves: but Tom was a hard-minded fellow,
not easily daunted, and he had lived so long
with a termagant wife, that he did not even fear
the devil.

It is said that after this commencement, they
had a long and earnest conversation together, as
Tom returned homewards. The black man told
him of great sums of money which had been buried
by Kidd the pirate, under the oak trees on
the high ridge not far from the morass. All these

were under his command and protected by his
power, so that none could find them but such
as propitiated his favour. These he offered to
place within Tom Walker's reach, having conceived
an especial kindness for him: but they
were to be had only on certain conditions.
What these conditions were, may easily be surmised,
though Tom never disclosed them publicly.
They must have been very hard, for he
required time to think of them, and he was not
a man to stick at trifles where money was in
view. When they had reached the edge of the
swamp the stranger paused.

“What proof have I that all you have been
telling me is true?” said Tom.

“There is my signature,” said the black man,
pressing his finger on Tom's forehead. So saying,
he turned off among the thickets of the
swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down,
down, down, into the earth, until nothing but his
head and shoulders could be seen, and so on until
he totally disappeared.

When Tom reached home he found the black

print of a finger burnt, as it were, into his forehead,
which nothing could obliterate.

The first news his wife had to tell him was the
sudden death of Absalom Crowninshield the rich
buccaneer. It was announced in the papers with
the usual flourish, that “a great man had fallen
in Israel.”

Tom recollected the tree which his black friend
had just hewn down, and which was ready for
burning. “Let the freebooter roast,” said Tom,
“who cares!” He now felt convinced that all
he had heard and seen was no illusion.

He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence;
but as this was an uneasy secret, he willingly
shared it with her. All her avarice was
awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she
urged her husband to comply with the black
man's terms and secure what would make them
wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt
disposed to sell himself to the devil, he was determined
not to do so to oblige his wife; so he
flatly refused out of the mere spirit of contradiction.
Many and bitter were the quarrels they

had on the subject, but the more she talked the
more resolute was Tom not to be demned to
please her. At length she determined to drive
the bargain on her own account, and if she succeeded,
to keep all the gain to herself.

Being of the same fearless temper as her husband,
she sat off for the old Indian fort towards
the close of a summer's day. She was many
hours absent. When she came back she was reserved
and sullen in her replies. She spoke something
of a black man whom she had met about
twilight, hewing at the root of a tall tree. He
was sulky, however, and would not come to terms;
she was to go again with a propitiatory offering,
but what it was she forebore to say.

The next evening she sat off again for the
swamp, with her apron heavily laden. Tom
waited and waited for her, but in vain: midnight
came, but she did not make her appearance;
morning, noon, night returned, but still she
did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for
her safety; especially as he found she had carried
off in her apron the silver teapot and

spoons and every portable article of value.
Another night elapsed, another morning came;
but no wife. In a word, she was never heard of
more.

What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence
of so many pretending to know. It is
one of those facts that have become confounded
by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she
lost her way among the tangled mazes of the
swamp and sunk into some pit or slough; others,
more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped with
the household booty, and made off to some other
province; while others assert that the tempter
had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire on top
of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation
of this, it was said a great black man
with an axe on his shoulder was seen late that
very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying
a bundle tied in a check apron, with an air of
surly triumph.

The most current and probable story, however,
observes that Tom Walker grew so anxious
about the fate of his wife and his property that

he sat out at length to seek them both at the Indian
fort. During a long summer's afternoon he
searched about the gloomy place, but no wife was
to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but
she was no where to be heard. The bittern alone
responded to his voice, as he flew screaming by;
or the bull frog croaked dolefully from a neighbouring
pool. At length, it is said, just in the
brown hour of twilight, when the owls began to
hoot and the bats to flit about, his attention was
attracted by the clamour of carrion crows that
were hovering about a cypress tree. He looked
and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and
hanging in the branches of the tree; with a great
vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon
it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized his
wife's apron, and supposed it to contain the
household valuables.

“Let us get hold of the property,” said he, consolingly
to himself, “and we will endeavour to
do without the woman.”

As he scrambled up the tree the vulture spread
its wide wings, and sailed off screaming into the

deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized the
check apron, but, woful sight! found nothing
but a heart and liver tied up in it.

Such, according to the most authentic old story,
was all that was to be found of Tom's wife.
She had probably attempted to deal with the
black man as she had been accustomed to deal
with her husband; but though a female scold is
generally considered a match for the devil, yet in
this instance she appears to have had the worst
of it. She must have died game however;
from the part that remained unconquered. Indeed,
it is said Tom noticed many prints of cloven
feet deeply stamped about the tree, and several
handsful of hair, that looked as if they had
been plucked from the coarse black shock of the
woodsman. Tom knew his wife's prowess by
experience. He shrugged his shoulders as he
looked at the signs of a fierce clapper-clawing.
“Egad,” said he to himself, “Old Scratch must
have had a tough time of it!”

Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property
by the loss of his wife; for he was a

little of a philosopher. He even felt something
like gratitude towards the black woodsman, who
he considered had done him a kindness. He
sought, therefore, to cultivate a farther acquaintance
with him, but for some time without success;
the old black legs played shy, for whatever
people may think, he is not always to be had for
calling for; he knows how to play his cards
when pretty sure of his game.

At length, it is said, when delay had whetted
Tom's eagerness to the quick, and prepared him
to agree to any thing rather than not gain the
promised treasure, he met the black man one
evening in his usual woodman dress, with his
axe on his shoulder, sauntering along the edge
of the swamp, and humming a tune. He affected
to receive Tom's advance with great indifference,
made brief replies, and went on humming
his tune.

By degrees, however, Tom brought him to
business, and they began to haggle about the
terms on which the former was to have the
pirate's treasure. There was one condition

which need not be mentioned, being generally
understood in all cases where the devil grants
favours; but there were others about which,
though of less importance, he was inflexibly obstinate.
He insisted that the money found through
his means should be employed in his service. He
proposed, therefore, that Tom should employ it
in the black traffick; that is to say, that he should
fit out a slave ship. This, however, Tom resolutely
refused; he was bad enough in all conscience;
but the devil himself could not tempt
him to turn slave dealer.

Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he
did not insist upon it, but proposed instead that
he should turn usurer; the devil being extremely
anxious for the increase of usurers, looking
upon them as his peculiar people.

To this no objections were made, for it was
just to Tom's taste.

“You shall open a broker's shop in Boston
next month,” said the black man.

“I'll do it to-morrow, if you wish,” said Tom
Walker.

“You shall lend money at two per cent. a
month.”

“Egad, I'll charge four!” replied Tom
Walker.

“You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages,
drive the merchant to bankruptcy—”

“I'll drive him to the d—l,” cried Tom
Walker, eagerly.

“You are the usurer for my money!” said the
black legs, with delight. “When will you want
the rhino?”

“This very night.”

“Done!” said the devil.

“Done!” said Tom Walker.—So they shook
hands, and struck a bargain.

A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated behind
his desk in a counting house in Boston. His
reputation for a ready moneyed man, who would
lend money out for a good consideration, soon
spread abroad. Every body remembers the days
of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly
scarce. It was a time of paper credit. The
country had been deluged with government bills;

the famous Land Bank had been established;
there had been a rage for speculating; the people
had run mad with schemes for new settlements;
for building cities in the wilderness; land jobbers
went about with maps of grants, and townships,
and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where, but
which every body was ready to purchase. In a
word, the great speculating fever which breaks
out every now and then in the country, had raged
to an alarming degree, and every body was
dreaming of making sudden fortunes from nothing.
As usual the fever had subsided; the
dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes
with it; the patients were left in doleful plight,
and the whole country resounded with the consequent
cry of “hard times.”

At this propitious time of public distress did
Tom Walker set up as a usurer in Boston. His
door was soon thronged by customers. The
needy and the adventurous; the gambling speculator;
the dreaming land jobber; the thriftless
tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit;
in short, every one driven to raise money by desperate

means and desperate sacrifices, hurried to
Tom Walker.

Thus Tom was the universal friend of the
needy, and he acted like a “friend in need;”
that is to say, he always exacted good pay and
good security. In proportion to the distress of
the applicant was the hardness of his terms. He
accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually
squeezed his customers closer and closer; and
sent them at length, dry as a sponge from his
door.

In this way he made money hand over hand;
became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his
cocked hat upon change. He built himself, as
usual, a vast house, out of ostentation; but left
the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished
out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage
in the fullness of his vain glory, though he nearly
starved the horses which drew it; and as the
ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the
axle trees, you would have thought you heard
the souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.

As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful.

Having secured the good things of this
world, he began to feel anxious about those of
the next. He thought with regret on the bargain
he had made with his black friend, and set
his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions.
He became, therefore, all of a sudden,
a violent church goer. He prayed loudly and strenuously
as if heaven were to be taken by force of
lungs. Indeed, one might always tell when he
had sinned most during the week, by the clamour
of his Sunday devotion. The quiet christians
who had been modestly and steadfastly travelling
Zionward, were struck with self reproach at seeing
themselves so suddenly outstripped in their career
by this new-made convert. Tom was as
rigid in religious, as in money matters; he was a
stern supervisor and censurer of his neighbours,
and seemed to think every sin entered up to
their account became a credit on his own side
of the page. He even talked of the expediency
of reviving the persecution of quakers and anabaptists.
In a word, Tom's zeal became as notorious
as his riches.

Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to
forms, Tom had a lurking dread that the devil,
after all, would have his due. That he might
not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he
always carried a small bible in his coat pocket.
He had also a great folio bible on his counting-house
desk, and would frequently be found reading
it when people called on business; on such occasions
he would lay his green spectacles on the
book, to mark the place, while he turned round
to drive some usurious bargain.

Some say that Tom grew a little crack brained
in his old days, and that fancying his end approaching,
he had his horse new shod, saddled
and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost;
because he supposed that at the last day the world
would be turned upside down; in which case he
should find his horse standing ready for mounting,
and he was determined at the worst to give his
old friend a run for it. This, however, is probably
a mere old wives fable. If he really did
take such a precaution it was totally superfluous;

at least so says the authentic old legend which
closes his story in the following manner.

On one hot afternoon in the dog days, just as
a terrible black thundergust was coming up, Tom
sat in his counting house in his white linen cap and
India silk morning gown. He was on the point
of foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would
complete the ruin of an unlucky land speculator
for whom he had professed the greatest friendship.
The poor land jobber begged him to grant
a few months indulgence. Tom had grown testy
and irritated and refused another day.

“My family will be ruined and brought upon
the parish,” said the land jobber. “Charity begins
at home,” replied Tom, “I must take care
of myself in these hard times.”

“You have made so much money out of me,”
said the speculator.

Tom lost his patience and his piety—“The
devil take me,” said he, “if I have made a farthing!”

Just then there were three loud knocks at the
street door. He stepped out to see who was

there. A black man was holding a black horse
which neighed and stamped with impatience.

“Tom, you're come for!” said the black fellow,
gruffly. Tom shrunk back, but too late. He
had left his little bible at the bottom of his coat
pocket, and his big bible on the desk buried under
the mortgage he was about to forclose: never
was sinner taken more unawares. The black
man whisked him like a child astride the horse
and away he galloped in the midst of a thunder
storm. The clerks stuck their pens behind their
ears and stared after him from the windows.
Away went Tom Walker, dashing down the
streets; his white cap bobbing up and down;
his morning gown fluttering in the wind, and
his steed striking fire out of the pavement at every
bound. When the clerks turned to look for the
black man he had disappeared.

Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the
mortgage. A countryman who lived on the
borders of the swamp, reported that in the height
of the thunder gust he had heard a great clattering
of hoofs and a howling along the road,

and that when he ran to the window he just
caught sight of a figure, such as I have described,
on a horse that galloped like mad across the
fields, over the hills and down into the black
hemlock swamp towards the old Indian fort;
and that shortly after a thunderbolt fell in that
direction which seemed to set the whole forest
in a blaze.

The good people of Boston shook their heads
and shrugged their shoulders, but had been so
much accustomed to witches and goblins and
tricks of the devil in all kinds of shapes from
the first settlement of the colony, that they were
not so much horror struck as might have been
expected. Trustees were appointed to take
charge of Tom's effects. There was nothing,
however, to administer upon. On searching
his coffers all his bonds and mortgages were
found reduced to cinders. In place of gold and
silver his iron chest was filled with chips and
shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead
of his half starved horses, and the very next day
his great house took fire and was burnt to the
ground.

Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill
gotten wealth. Let all griping money brokers
lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not to
be doubted. The very hole under the oak trees,
from whence he dug Kidd's money is to be seen
to this day; and the neighbouring swamp and
old Indian fort is often haunted in stormy nights
by a figure on horseback, in a morning gown and
white cap, which is doubtless the troubled spirit
of the usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itself
into a proverb, and is the origin of that popular
saying, prevalent throughout New-England;
of “The Devil and Tom Walker.”

Such, as nearly as I can recollect, was the tenor
of the tale told by the Cape Cod whaler.
There were divers trivial particulars which I
have omitted, and which whiled away the morning
very pleasantly, until the time of tide favourable
for fishing being passed, it was proposed

that we should go to land, and refresh ourselves
under the trees, until the noon-tide heat
should have abated.

We accordingly landed on a delectable part of
the island of Mannahatta, in that shady and embowered
tract formerly under dominion of the
ancient family of the Hardenbrooks. It was a
spot well known to me in the course of the aquatic
expeditions of my boyhood. Not far from
where we landed, was an old Dutch family vault,
in the side of a bank, which had been an object
of great awe and fable among my school boy associates.
There were several mouldering coffins
within; but what gave it a fearful interest
with us, was its being connected in our minds
with the pirate wreck which lay among the rocks
of Hell Gate. There were also stories of smuggling
connected with it, particularly during a
time that this retired spot was owned by a noted
burgher called Ready Money Prevost; a man
of whom it was whispered that he had many
and mysterious dealings with parts beyond seas.
All these things, however, had been jumbled

together in our minds in that vague way in which
such themes are mingled up in the tales of boyhood.

While I was musing upon these matters my companions
had spread a repast, from the contents of
our well-stored pannier, and we solaced ourselves
during the warm sunny hours of mid-day under
the shade of a broad chesnut, on the cool grassy
carpet that swept down to the water's edge.
While lolling on the grass I summoned up the
dusky recollections of my boyhood respecting
this place, and repeated them like the imperfectly
remembered traces of a dream, for the entertainment
of my companions. When I had finished
a worthy old burgher, John Josse Vandermoere,
the same who once related to me the
adventures of Dolph Heyliger, broke silence and
observed, that he recollected a story about money
digging which occurred in this very neighbourhood.
As we knew him to be one of the
most authentic narrators of the province we begged
him to let us have the particulars, and accordingly,
while we refreshed ourselves with a

clean long pipe of Blase Moore's tobacco, the authentic
John Josse Vandermoere related the following
tale.