The Devil and Tom Walker
A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inletwinding several miles into the interior of the country from CharlesBay, and terminating in a thickly wooded swamp or morass. On one sideof this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the landrises abruptly from the water's edge into a high ridge, on which growa few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. Under one of thesegigantic trees, according to old stories, there was a great amount oftreasure buried by Kidd the pirate. The inlet allowed a facility tobring the money in a boat secretly, and at night, to the very foot ofthe hill; the elevation of the place permitted a good lookout to bekept that no one was at hand; while the remarkable trees formed goodlandmarks by which the place might easily be found again. The oldstories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of themoney, and took it under his guardianship; but this, it is well known,he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has beenill-gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to recover hiswealth; being shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to England, andthere hanged for a pirate.
About the year 1727, just at the time that earthquakes were prevalentin New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees,there lived near this place a meagre, miserly fellow, of the name ofTom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserlythat they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman couldlay hands on she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on thealert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually pryingabout to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were theconflicts that took place about what ought to have been commonproperty. They lived in a forlorn-looking house that stood alone andhad an air of starvation. A few straggling savin-trees, emblems ofsterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; notraveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were asarticulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field, wherea thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds ofpudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes hewould 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 atall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and strong of arm.Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and hisface sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined towords. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them. Thelonely wayfarer shrank within himself at the horrid clamor andclapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance; and hurried on hisway, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy.
One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of theneighborhood, he took what he considered a short-cut homeward, throughthe swamp. Like most short-cuts, it was an ill-chosen route. The swampwas thickly grown with great, gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of themninety feet high, which made it dark at noonday and a retreat forall the owls of the neighborhood. It was full of pits and quagmires,partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface oftenbetrayed the traveller into a gulf of black, smothering mud; therewere also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, thebull-frog, and the water-snake, where the trunks of pines and hemlockslay half-drowned, half-rotting, looking like alligators sleeping inthe mire.
Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherousforest, stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots, which affordedprecarious footholds among deep sloughs, or pacing carefully, like acat, along the prostrate trunks of trees, startled now and then bythe 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 afirm piece of ground, which ran like a peninsula into the deep bosomof the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians duringtheir wars with the first colonists. Here they had thrown up a kind offort, which they had looked upon as almost impregnable, and had usedas a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remainedof the old Indian fort but a few embankments, gradually sinking to thelevel of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaksand other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a contrast to thedark pines and hemlocks of the swamps.
It was late in the dusk of evening when Tom Walker reached the oldfort, and he paused there awhile to rest himself. Any one but he wouldhave felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholy place, forthe common people had a bad opinion of it, from the stories handeddown from the times of the Indian wars, when it was asserted that thesavages held incantations here and made sacrifices to the Evil Spirit.
Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears ofthe kind. He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallenhemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delvingwith his walking-staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As heturned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against somethinghard. 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 onthe weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death-blow hadbeen given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that hadtaken place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors.
"Humph!" said Tom Walker, as he gave it a kick to shake the dirt fromit.
"Let that skull alone!" said a gruff voice. Tom lifted up his eyes andbeheld a great black man seated directly opposite him, on the stump ofa tree. He was exceedingly surprised, having neither heard nor seenany one approach; and he was still more perplexed on observing, aswell as the gathering gloom would permit, that the stranger wasneither negro nor Indian. It is true he was dressed in a rude Indiangarb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round his body; but hisface was neither black nor copper-color, but swarthy and dingy, andbegrimed with soot, as if he had been accustomed to toil among firesand forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair, that stood out fromhis 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 on my grounds?" said the black man, with a hoarse,growling voice.
"Your grounds!" said Tom, with a sneer; "no more your grounds thanmine; they belong to Deacon Peabody."
"Deacon Peabody be damned," said the stranger, "as I flatter myself hewill be, if he does not look more to his own sins and less to those ofhis neighbors. Look yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody is faring."
Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld oneof the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at thecore, and saw that it had been nearly hewn through, so that the firsthigh wind was likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree wasscored the name of Deacon Peabody, an eminent man who had waxedwealthy by driving shrewd bargains with the Indians. He now lookedaround, and found most of the tall trees marked with the name of somegreat man of the colony, and all more or less scored by the axe. Theone on which he had been seated, and which had evidently just beenhewn down, bore the name of Crowninshield; and he recollected a mightyrich man of that name, who made a vulgar display of wealth, which itwas whispered he had acquired by buccaneering.
"He's just ready for burning!" said the black man, with a growl oftriumph. "You see I am likely to have a good stock of firewood forwinter."
"But what right have you," said Tom, "to cut down Deacon Peabody'stimber?"
"The right of a prior claim," said the other. "This woodland belongedto me long before one of your white-faced race put foot upon thesoil."
"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 neighborhood I am known by the nameof the black woodsman. I am he to whom the red men consecrated thisspot, and in honor of whom they now and then roasted a white man,by way of sweet-smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have beenexterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself by presiding at thepersecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists; I am the great patron andprompter 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-civilnod.
Such was the opening of this interview, according to the old story;though it has almost too familiar an air to be credited. One wouldthink that to meet with such a singular personage in this wild, lonelyplace would have shaken any man's nerves; but Tom was a hard-mindedfellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long with a termagantwife that he did not even fear the devil.
It is said that after this commencement they had a long and earnestconversation together, as Tom returned homeward. The black man toldhim of great sums of money buried by Kidd the pirate under theoak-trees on the high ridge, not far from the morass. All these wereunder his command, and protected by his power, so that none could findthem but such as propitiated his favor. These he offered to placewithin Tom Walker's reach, having conceived an especial kindness forhim; but they were to be had only on certain conditions. What theseconditions were may be easily surmised, though Tom never disclosedthem publicly. They must have been very hard, for he required time tothink of them, and he was not a man to stick at trifles when money wasin view. When they had reached the edge of the swamp, the strangerpaused. "What proof have I that all you have been telling me is true?"said Tom. "There's my signature," said the black man, pressing hisfinger on Tom's forehead. So saying, he turned off among the thicketsof the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down, down, intothe earth, until nothing but his head and shoulders could be seen, andso on, until he totally disappeared.
When Tom reached home he found the black print of a finger burned, asit were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate.
The first news his wife had to tell him was the sudden death ofAbsalom Crowninshield, the rich buccaneer. It was announced in thepapers, with the usual flourish, that "A great man had fallen inIsrael."
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 wasno illusion.
He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence; but as this wasan uneasy secret, he willingly shared it with her. All her avarice wasawakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband tocomply with the black man's terms, and secure what would make themwealthy for life. However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himselfto the devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife; sohe flatly refused, out of the mere spirit of contradiction. Many andbitter were the quarrels they had on the subject; but the more shetalked, the more resolute was Tom not to be damned 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 samefearless temper as her husband, she set off for the old Indian forttoward the close of a summer's day. She was many hours absent. Whenshe came back, she was reserved and sullen in her replies. She spokesomething of a black man, whom she had met about twilight hewing atthe root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however, and would not come toterms; she was to go again with a propitiatory offering, but what itwas she forbore to say.
The next evening she set off again for the swamp, with her apronheavily laden. Tom waited and waited for her, but in vain; midnightcame, but she did not make her appearance; morning, noon, nightreturned, but still she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for hersafety, especially as he found she had carried off in her apron thesilver tea-pot 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 manypretending to know. It is one of those facts which have becomeconfounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost herway among the tangled mazes of the swamp, and sank into some pit orslough; others, more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped with thehousehold booty, and made off to some other province; while otherssurmised that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire, onthe top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation of this, itwas said a great black man, with an axe on his shoulder, was seen latethat very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in acheck apron, with an air of surly triumph.
The most current and probable story, however, observes that Tom Walkergrew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property that heset out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort. During a longsummer's afternoon he searched about the gloomy place, but no wife wasto be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she was nowhere to beheard. The bittern alone responded to his voice, as he flew screamingby; or the bull-frog croaked dolefully from a neighboring pool. Atlength, it is said, just in the brown hour of twilight, when the owlsbegan to hoot and the bats to flit about, his attention was attractedby the clamor of carrion crows hovering about a cypress-tree. Helooked up and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and hanging inthe branches of the tree, with a great vulture perched hard by, asif keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized hiswife'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 endeavor to do without the woman."
As he scrambled up the tree, the vulture spread its wide wings andsailed off, screaming, into the deep shadows of the forest. Tom seizedthe checked apron, but, woful sight! found nothing but a heart andliver tied up in it!
Such, according to this most authentic old story, was all that was tobe found of Tom's wife. She had probably attempted to deal with theblack man as she had been accustomed to deal with her husband; butthough 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 musthave died game, however; for it is said Tom noticed many prints ofcloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and found handfuls of hair,that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse black shock ofthe woodsman. Tom knew his wife's prowess by experience. He shruggedhis shoulders as he looked at the signs of fierce clapper-clawing."Egad," said he to himself, "Old Scratch must have had a tough time ofit!"
Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property, with the loss ofhis wife, for he was a man of fortitude. He even felt something likegratitude toward the black woodsman, who, he considered, had done hima kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a further acquaintancewith him, but for some time without success; the old black-legs playedshy, for, whatever people may think, he is not always to be had forthe calling; he knows how to play his cards when pretty sure of hisgame.
At length, it is said, when delay had whetted Tom's eagerness to thequick and prepared him to agree to anything rather than not gain thepromised treasure, he met the black man one evening in his usualwoodsman's dress, with his axe on his shoulder, sauntering along theswamp and humming a tune. He affected to receive Tom's advances withgreat indifference, made brief replies, and went on humming his tune.
By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business, and they began tohaggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate'streasure. There was one condition which need not be mentioned, beinggenerally understood in all cases where the devil grants favors; butthere were others about which, though of less importance, he wasinflexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through hismeans should be employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, thatTom should employ it in the black traffic; that is to say, that heshould fit out a slave-ship. This, however, Tom resolutely refused;
he was bad enough in all conscience, but the devil himself could nottempt him to turn slave-trader.
Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not insist upon it,but proposed, instead, that he should turn usurer; the devil beingextremely anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon them ashis 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 blackman.
"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 merchants tobankruptcy--"
"I'll drive them to the devil," cried Tom Walker.
"_You_ are the usurer for my money!" said 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 acounting-house in Boston.
His reputation for a ready-moneyed man, who would lend money out for agood consideration, soon spread abroad. Everybody remembers the timeof Governor Belcher, when money was particularly scarce. It was a timeof paper credit. The country had been deluged with government bills;the famous Land Bank had been established; there had been a rage forspeculating; the people had run mad with schemes for new settlements,for building cities in the wilderness; land-jobbers went about withmaps of grants and townships and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where,but which everybody was ready to purchase. In a word, the greatspeculating fever which breaks out every now and then in the countryhad raged to an alarming degree, and everybody was dreaming of makingsudden fortunes from nothing. As usual, the fever had subsided, thedream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it; the patientswere left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with theconsequent cry of "hard times."
At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up asusurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needyand adventurous, the gambling speculator, the dreaming land-jobber,the thriftless tradesman, the merchant with cracked credit--in short,everyone driven to raise money by desperate means and desperatesacrifices hurried to Tom Walker.
Thus Tom was the universal friend to the needy, and acted like "afriend in need"; that is to say, he always exacted good pay andsecurity. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was thehardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages, graduallysqueezed his customers closer and closer, and sent them at length, dryas a sponge, from his door.
In this way he made money hand over hand, became a rich and mightyman, and exalted his cocked hat upon "Change." He built himself, asusual, a vast house, out of ostentation, but left the greater partof it unfinished and unfurnished, out of parsimony. He even set up acarriage in the fulness of his vain-glory, though he nearly starvedthe horses which drew it; and, as the ungreased wheels groaned andscreeched on the axle-trees, you would have thought you heard thesouls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.
As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the goodthings of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of thenext. He thought with regret of the bargain he had made with his blackfriend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions.He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent church-goer. Heprayed loudly and strenuously, as if heaven were to be taken by forceof lungs. Indeed, one might always tell when he had sinned most duringthe week by the clamor of his Sunday devotion. The quiet Christianswho had been modestly and steadfastly travelling Zionward were struckwith self-reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped intheir career by this new-made convert. Tom was as rigid in religiousas in money matters; he was a stern supervisor and censurer of hisneighbors, and seemed to think every sin entered up to their accountbecame a credit on his own side of the page. He even talked of theexpediency of reviving the persecution of Quakers and Anabaptists. Ina word, Tom's zeal became as notorious as his riches.
Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms, Tom had alurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. That hemight not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried asmall Bible in his coat-pocket. He had also a great folio Bible on hiscounting-house desk, and would frequently be found reading it whenpeople called on business; on such occasions he would lay his greenspectacles in the book, to mark the place, while he turned round todrive some usurious bargain.
Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his old days, andthat, fancying his end approaching, he had his horse new shod,saddled, and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost; because hesupposed 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 forit. This, however, is probably a mere old wives' fable. If he reallydid take such a precaution, it was totally superfluous; at least sosays the authentic old legend, which closes his story in the followingmanner:
One hot summer afternoon in the dog-days, just as a terrible blackthunder-gust was coming up, Tom sat in his counting-house, in hiswhite linen cap and India silk morning-gown. He was on the point offoreclosing a mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of anunlucky land-speculator for whom he had professed the greatestfriendship. The poor land-jobber begged him to grant a few months'indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated, and refused anotherdelay.
"My family will be ruined, and brought upon the parish," said theland-jobber.
"Charity begins at home," replied Tom; "I must take care of myself inthese 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, "ifI have made a farthing!"
Just then there were three loud knocks at the street door. He steppedout to see who was there. A black man was holding a black horse, whichneighed and stamped with impatience.
"Tom, you're come for," said the black fellow, gruffly. Tom shrankback, but too late. He had left his little Bible at the bottom of hiscoat-pocket and his big Bible on the desk buried under the mortgagehe was about to foreclose: never was sinner taken more unawares. Theblack man whisked him like a child into the saddle, gave the horse thelash, and away he galloped, with Tom on his back, in the midst of thethunder-storm. The clerks stuck their pens behind their ears, andstared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing downthe streets, his white cap bobbing up and down, his morning-gownfluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of thepavement at every bound. When the clerks turned to look for the blackman, he had disappeared.
Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman, wholived on the border of the swamp, reported that in the height of thethunder-gust he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a howlingalong the road, and running to the window caught sight of a figure,such as I have described, on a horse that galloped like mad across thefields, over the hills, and down into the black hemlock swamp towardthe old Indian fort, and that shortly after a thunder-bolt falling inthat direction seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze.
The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged theirshoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins, andtricks of the devil, in all kinds of shapes, from the first settlementof the colony, that they were not so much horror-struck as mighthave been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom'seffects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searchinghis coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were reduced to cinders. Inplace of gold and silver, his iron chest was filled with chips andshavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his half-starvedhorses, and the very next day his great house took fire and was burnedto the ground.
Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let allgripping money-brokers lay this story to heart. The truth of it is notto be doubted. The very hole under the oak-trees, whence he dug Kidd'smoney, is to be seen to this day; and the neighboring swamp andold Indian fort are often haunted in stormy nights by a figure onhorseback, in morning-gown and white cap, which is doubtless thetroubled spirit of the usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itselfinto a proverb, and is the origin of that popular saying, so prevalentthroughout New England, of "The devil and Tom Walker."
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