More Short & Shivery by Robert D. San Souci

Author:Robert D. San Souci [Souci, Robert D. San]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 978-0-307-78174-1
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-03-02T05:00:00+00:00

Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the swarms of mice disappeared. Many people were convinced that the animals were really the souls of those the bishop had so cruelly slain. The Mauseturm remains a place of fearful fascination. It is rumored that one can still hear the ghostly cries of the wretched bishop and the chittering of hordes of unseen mice on the anniversary of the fatal barn fire.

The Devil and Tom Walker

(United States—from a tale by Washington Irving)

A few miles from Boston, the sea has cut a deep inlet that winds several miles inland and ends in a thickly wooded swamp. On one side of the water is a dark grove of trees; on the opposite side the land rises abruptly from the shore into a high ridge, on which grow scattered oaks of immense age and size. Under one such tree, according to old stories, Captain Kidd the pirate buried a great treasure. The stories add that the devil oversaw the hiding of the money, and took it under his guardianship, as he always does with buried treasure that has been ill-gotten. Kidd never returned to claim his gold, being captured soon after at Boston, sent to England, and there hanged for piracy.

Later, in the year 1727, a miserly fellow named Tom Walker dwelled near this place. He lived in a forlorn house surrounded by a few straggling trees. One day Tom took a shortcut homeward, through the swamp. Like most shortcuts, it was an ill-chosen route.

It was dusk when Tom reached the ruins of an old fort in the middle of the swamp. He paused to rest on the trunk of a fallen hemlock. Absently, he turned up the soil with his walking staff. Suddenly his staff struck something hard, and he uncovered an ancient skull with a tomahawk buried deep in it.

“Humph!” said Tom Walker as he gave it a kick.

“Let that skull alone!” said a gruff voice. Tom looked up and saw a tall man dressed in black seated opposite him on the stump of a tree. He scowled at Tom with a pair of large red eyes. “What are you doing on my ground?”

“And pray, who are you, if I may be so bold?” said Tom.

“Oh, I go by various names. In this neighborhood I am known by the name of The Black Woodsman.”

“If I mistake not,” said Tom sturdily, “you are also commonly called Old Scratch.”

“At your service!” replied the devil with a nod.

And so the two began a conversation as Tom returned homeward. The dark man told him of huge sums of gold and silver buried by Kidd the pirate, under the oak trees on the high ridge. This treasure was protected by his power, so that only someone who gained his favor could find it. This he offered to Tom, on certain conditions.

The conditions must have been very hard, because Tom asked for time to think about them, and he was not a man to worry about trifles when money was in view.

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