San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1889-03-21
The Devil and Tom Walker.
By WASHINGTON IRVING.

~ ltw lHllto ttOtli AFVohoht III pAaoolT
sets, there Is deep inlet, winding sev.
eral miles into the interior Of the coun.
try from Charles bay and terminating
In thickly wooded swamp. or morass,
On one side Of this inlet Is beautiful
dark grove, on the opposite side tho land
rises abruptly from tho waters edge into
q high ridge on which grow few scat
tered oaks of great age and immense
size. 1t was under one Of these gigantic
trees, according to old stories, that Kidd,
the pirate, buried his treasure. The in.
let allowed facility to bring the money
In boat secretly and at night to the
very foot Of the hill The elevation Of
the place permitted good lookout 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 1t under his guar
dianship; but this, 1t is well known, he
always does with buried treasure, par
ticularly when 1t has been i'll gotten.
Be that as 1t may, Kidd never returned
to recover his wealth, being shortly after
seized at Boston, sent out to England,
and there hanged for pirate.
About the year 1927, just at the time
when earthquakes were prevalent In
New England, and shook manyStall sim
ners down upon their knees, there lived
near this place meager, miserly fellow
of the nane of Tom Walker. He had
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; hen could
not cackle but she was on the alert to Sc
cure the new laid egg. Her husband
was continually prying about to detect
her secret boards, and many and fierce
were the conflicts that took place about
what ought to have been common prop
erty. They lived in forlorn looking
house, that stood alone and had an air Of
starvation. A few struggling savin
trees, emblems Of sterility, grew near it,;
no smoke ever curled from its chimney;
no traveller stopped at its door. A miser-
able horse, whose ribs were as articulate
as the bars of a gridiron, stallred 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 de-
liverance from this land of famine. The
house and its inmates had altogether a
bad name. Toms wife was tall ter
magant. fierce of temper, loud of tongue
and strong of arm. Her voice was often
heard In wordy warfare with her hus.
band; and his face sometimes showed
signs that their conflicts were not con-
fined to words. No one ventured, how
ever, to interfere between them; the
lonely wayfarer shrunk within himself
at the horrid clamor and clapper claw.
ing; eyed the den of discord askance and
hurried on his way rejoicing, If bach
elor, in his celibacy.
One day that Tom Walker had been to
distant part Of the neighborhood, he
took what ho considered a short cut
homewards through the swamp. Like
most short cuts, It was an III 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 retreat
for all the owls Of the neighborhood. It
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 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 alli-
gators. sleeping in the mire.
Tom had long been picking his way
cautiously through this treacherous for
est; stepping from tuft to tuft Of rushes
and roots which afforded precarious foot
holds among deep sloughs; or pacing
carefully, like cat, among the PROSTATE
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. At
length he arrived at piece of firm
ground, which ran out like peninsula
into the deep bosom Of the swamp. 1t
had been one Of the strongholds of the
Indians during their wars with the first
colonists. Here they had thrown up q
kind of fort which they had looked upon
as almost impregnable, and had used as
place of refuge for their squaws and
children. Nothing remained Of the In
dian fort but few embankments grad
ually sinking to the level OF the sur
rounding 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 awhile TO rest himself.
ANY one but he would have felt unwill-
ing to linger in this lonely, melancholy
place, for the common people had a bad
opinion Of 1t from the stories handed
down from the time Of the Indian wars;
when it was asserted that the savages
held incantations here and made sacri-
fees TO the evil spirit. Tom Walker,
however, was not a man TO DO troubled
with any fears Of the kind.
lie reposed himself for some time on
the trunk Of fallen hemlock, listening
to the boding cry Of the tree toad, and
delving with his walking staff into a
mound Of black mold at his feet As he
turned up the soil unconsciously. his
staff struck against something hard. he
raked il out Of the vegetable mold, and
10, a cloven skull with an Indian toma-
hawk buried deep in 1t, lay before him.
The rust on the weapon showed the timo
that had ELAPSED since this death blow
had been given. Il was a dreary me
meuto Of the fierce trouble that had
taken place in this last fOOthold Of the
Indian uaTTiors-
-HunphF' said Tom Walker, as be
ave tie sEall a kick 10 shake the dirt
from IL
"Det that sfUll sloreT said gTu.i
rCicc
Tosn lifted up LIS cyes and jebald a
rrraf black man seated directly opposite
lin On the stump q a tree. lie WEs eJ-
ceedfnglv surprised, having neither sen