The Arkansaw traveler., 1883-12-15
THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER
BY wts}ii>@:eN lgAl>s

CauSet,s there Is a deep inlet. widening several miles into the interior ot the sountry from Charles bay, and ,ermn- a,ins in,o thiekly wooded swamp or morass.
 On one side ot this inlet Is beautiful dark grove on the opposite side the land rses abruptly from the waters edge mo high ridge on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age and immense slze.
 Under one oi these gigantic trees. ac- so. dIng to old stories, there was a great amount of treasure buried by Kidd the pIIa,e.
 The inle, allowed a facility 10 bring the money m boat secretly ard |, night ,o the very foot of the hill the elevation of he place permitted a good lookor, to be kep, that no one was at hand; while the remarkable trees formed good land marks by which the place nigh, easily be ioand again.
 The old stories add. moreover. that ,Ae devil presided at the hiding of the .acrey, and took II under his guardian ,hlp but this. il is we'll known. be al ways does with buried treasure. par,icu- larly when il has been ill-gotten. Be thai as t may. Kidd never returned 10 recover his wealth being shortly after se:zed q, Boston, sent out io England. and there hanged for a pirate.
 About the year f7c-. just at the tune that earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees. there lived near ;his place meager, miseriy fellow. oi Gatl l. wife as miserly as himself. they were so m,serly that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could
 ny hands on she hid away hen could no; eackle but she was on the alert to se- cure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually prying about 10 detect her secret hoards. and many and herce were :he conflicts that took place abou, wha, ought to have been common property.
 They lived ip forlorn-looking house ,ha, stood alone, and had an air of star vation. 4 few struggling savin trees, emblems of sterility, grew near it. no smoke ever curled from it's chimney no traveller stopped a; it's door. 4 miserable horse, whose ribs were as artlcula,c as the bars of gridiron. stalked abou, a tie!d, where thin carpet of moss, scarce ly covering the ragged beds of pudding stone. ,antalited and baked hIs hunger :: and sometimes he wsuid lean his head over the fence. look pi,eously at the passers-ey, and seem to petition deliver. anee from this land of famine.
 The house and it's inmates had al together bad name. Toms wife was tall ;ermagant, 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 ,ha, their conflicts were not confined 10 words. No one ventured. however. to interfere between them. The lonely wayfare- shrunk within himself at the norrid clamor and clapper-clawing eyed the den of discord askance: and hurried on his way, rejoicing. fl bache- Tor. !n his celibacy.
 One day tha, Tom Walker had been 10 a distant part of the neighborhood he took what he considered a short cut homeward, through the swamp. Like most short cuts. 1t was an ill-chosen route. The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlooks. some of them ninety feet high. which made II dark at monday, and re,rea, for all the owls of the neighbor hood. Il, was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and moses. where the green surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black, smo,hering mud there was also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole. the bull frog and the water snake where the trunks of pines and hemloeks lay half drowned, hslt-rot;ing. looking like alliga- tors sleeping in the mIre.
 Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this ,reaeherous for es, stepping from tuft to tuf, of rushes and roots. wh.ch afforded precarious footholds among deep sloughs or pac- ing carefully. like cat, along the pros tra;e trunks of trees startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of wild duck rising on the wing from some solitary pool A, length he arrlved a, firm piece of ground. which ran ou; like a peninsula into the deep bosom ot the swamp.
 l, had been one of the strongholds 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 been used as place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained of the old Indian fort but few embark ments, gradually sinking to the level oi the surrounding earth, and already over grown in par, by oaks and other forest trees. the foliage of which formed con- trast 10 the dark pines and hemiocks of the swamp.
 l, was late in the dusk of evening when Tom Walker reached the old fort, and he paused there awhile to rest himself Any one but he would have felt unwilling to finger in this lonely. melancholy place, for the comm or people had bad opin- ioh oi it, from the stories handed down from the time of the Indian wars when tt was asserted that the savages helG in-