Produced by David Widger
By
Charles M. Skinner
Vol. 2.
Dolph Heyliger
The Knell at the Wedding
Roistering Dirck Van Dara
The Party from Gibbet Island
Miss Britton's Poker
The Devil's Stepping-Stones
The Springs of Blood and Water
The Crumbling Silver
The Cortelyou Elopement
Van Wempel's Goose
The Weary Watcher
The Rival Fiddlers
Wyandank
Mark of the Spirit Hand
The First Liberal Church
New York was New Amsterdam when Dolph Heyliger got himself born there,—agraceless scamp, though a brave, good-natured one, and being leftpenniless on his father's death he was fain to take service with adoctor, while his mother kept a shop. This doctor had bought a farm onthe island of Manhattoes—away out of town, where Twenty-third Street nowruns, most likely—and, because of rumors that its tenants had noisedabout it, he seemed likely to enjoy the responsibilities of landholdingand none of its profits. It suited Dolph's adventurous disposition thathe should be deputed to investigate the reason for these rumors, and forthree nights he kept his abode in the desolate old manor, emerging afterdaybreak in a lax and pallid condition, but keeping his own counsel, tothe aggravation of the populace, whose ears were burning for his news.
Not until long after did he tell of the solemn tread that woke him in thesmall hours, of his door softly opening, though he had bolted and lockedit, of a portly Fleming, with curly gray hair, reservoir boots, slouchedhat, trunk and doublet, who entered and sat in the arm-chair, watchinghim until the cock crew. Nor did he tell how on the third night hesummoned courage, hugging a Bible and a catechism to his breast forconfidence, to ask the meaning of the visit, and how the Fleming arose,and drawing Dolph after him with his eyes, led him downstairs, wentthrough the front door without unbolting it, leaving that task for thetrembling yet eager youth, and how, after he had proceeded to a disusedwell at the bottom of the garden, he vanished from sight.
Dolph brooded long upon these things and dreamed of them in bed. Healleged that it was in obedience to his dreams that he boarded a schoonerbound up the Hudson, without the formality of adieu to his employer, andafter being spilled ashore in a gale at the foot of Storm King, he fellinto the company of Anthony Vander Hevden, a famous landholder andhunter, who achieved a fancy for Dolph as a lad who could shoot, fish,row, and swim, and took him home with him to Albany. The Heer hadcommodious quarters, good liquor, and a pretty daughter, and Dolph felthimself in paradise until led to the room he was to occupy, for one ofthe first things that he set eyes on in that apartment was a portrait ofthe very person who had kept him awake for the worse part of three nightsat the bowerie in Manhattoes. He demanded to know whose picture it was,and learned that it was that of Killian Vander Spiegel, burgomaster andcurmudgeon, who buried his money when the English seized New Amsterdamand fretted himself to death lest it should be discovered. He rememberedthat his mother had spoken of this Sp