My first thought upon reading this note was, not of the alleged mystery
of manner to which, at the outset, it alluded--for none such had I at
all observed in the master-mason during his surveys--but of my late
kinsman, Captain Julian Dacres, long a ship-master and merchant in
the Indian trade, who, about thirty years ago, and at the ripe age
of ninety, died a bachelor, and in this very house, which he had
built. He was supposed to have retired into this country with a large
fortune. But to the general surprise, after being at great cost in
building himself this mansion, he settled down into a sedate, reserved
and inexpensive old age, which by the neighbors was thought all the
better for his heirs: but lo! upon opening the will, his property was
found to consist but of the house and grounds, and some ten thousand
dollars in stocks; but the place, being found heavily mortgaged, was
in consequence sold. Gossip had its day, and left the grass quietly to
creep over the captain's grave, where he still slumbers in a privacy
as unmolested as if the billows of the Indian Ocean, instead of the
billows of inland verdure, rolled over him. Still, I remembered long
ago, hearing strange solutions whispered by the country people for
the mystery involving his will, and, by reflex, himself; and that,
too, as well in conscience as purse. But people who could circulate
the report (which they did), that Captain Julian Dacres had, in his
day, been a Borneo pirate, surely were not worthy of credence in their
collateral notions. It is queer what wild whimsies of rumors will,
like toadstools, spring up about any eccentric stranger, who settling
down among a rustic population, keeps quietly to himself. With some,
inoffensiveness would seem a prime cause of offense. But what chiefly
had led me to scout at these rumors, particularly as referring to
concealed treasure, was the circumstance, that the stranger (the same
who razeed the roof and the chimney) into whose hands the estate had
passed on my kinsman's death, was of that sort of character, that had
there been the least ground for those reports, he would speedily have
tested them, by tearing down and rummaging the walls.
Nevertheless, the note of Mr. Scribe, so strangely recalling the memory
of my kinsman, very naturally chimed in with what had been mysterious,
or at least unexplained, about him; vague flashings of ingots united
in my mind with vague gleamings of skulls. But the first cool thought
soon dismissed such chimeras; and, with a calm smile, I turned towards
my wife, who, meantime, had been sitting near by, impatient enough, I
dare say, to know who could have taken it into his head to write me a
letter.
"Well, old man," said she, "who is it from, and what is it about?"
"Read it, wife," said I, handing it.
Read it she did, and then--such an explosion! I will not pretend to
describe her emotions, or repeat her expressions. Enough that my
daughters were quickly called in to share the excitement. Although they
had never dreamed of such a revelation as Mr. Scribe's; yet upon the
first suggestion they instinctively saw the extreme likelihood of it.
In corroboration, they cited first my kinsman, and second, my chimney;
alleging that the profound mystery involving the former, and the
equally profound masonry involving the latter, though both acknowledged
facts, were alike preposterous on any other supposition than the secret
closet.
But all this time I was quietly thinking to myself: Could it be hidden
from me that my credulity in this instance would operate very favorably
to a certain plan of theirs? How to get to the secret closet, or how
to have any certainty about it at all, without making such fell work
with my chimney as to render its set destruction superfluous? That my
wife wished to get rid of the chimney, it needed no reflection to show;
and that Mr. Scribe, for all his pretended disinterestedness, was not
opposed to pocketing five hundred dollars by the operation, seemed
equally evident. That my wife had, in secret, laid heads together with
Mr. Scribe, I at present refrain from affirming. But when I consider
her enmity against my chimney, and the steadiness with which at the
last she is wont to carry out her schemes, if by hook or crook she can,
especially after having been once baffled, why, I scarcely knew at what
step of hers to be surprised.
Of one thing only was I resolved, that I and my chimney should not
budge.
In vain all protests. Next morning I went out into the road, where I
had noticed a diabolical-looking old gander, that, for its doughty
exploits in the way of scratching into forbidden inclosures, had
been rewarded by its master with a portentous, four-pronged, wooden
decoration, in the shape of a collar of the Order of the Garotte. This
gander I cornered and rummaging out its stiffest quill, plucked it,
took it home, and making a stiff pen, inscribed the following stiff
note:
CHIMNEY SIDE, April 2.
_Mr. Scribe_
SIR:--For your conjecture, we return you our joint thanks and
compliments, and beg leave to assure you, that
We shall remain,
Very faithfully,
The same,