All was silent and dark in the little house where Hanz Toodleburg lived, when the wagon containing Tite and the inn-keeper drew up at the gate. A dull, dreamy stillness seemed to hang over the place, and the little, old house was in the full enjoyment of a deep sleep. The two men alighted, and Tite stood for a few minutes viewing the scene around him. How strange and yet how familiar everything seemed. He was at the opposite side of the world only a few months ago, and time had sped on so swiftly that it seemed as if he had gone to bed at night on one side of the globe, and waked up in the morning at the other. Then he was on an island almost unknown to the rest of the world, surrounded by scenes so wild, so strange and romantic, that the reader would not believe them real.
Here now was the old lattice gate, the vine-covered arbor leading through the garden to the cracked and blistered-faced front door, the stack of hop-vines in the garden-corner, and the rickety veranda where, when a boy, he used to sit beside his father of a summer evening, for it was here Hanz welcomed his friends and smoked his pipe. It was here, too, that Angeline, the spirit of whose sweet face had been with him in his wanderings, used to sit at her flax-wheel, spinning thread that was famous in Fly Market.
Could this be a sweet dream, a beautiful delusion, a spirit-spell that moves the soul with pictures of love and enchantment, and from which some stern reality would soon awake him and dispel the charm? No, it was reality, appealing more forcibly to all that was true and kindly in his nature, and filling his eyes with tears.
The inn-keeper noticed the effect it was having on his feelings, and made an effort to divert his attention. "Looks kind o' natural after bein' round the world doesn't it, Tite?" he enquired.
"Yes—seems like home again," was the quiet reply.
"Zounds!" exclaimed the inn-keeper, suddenly; "but there's somethin' heavy in it." In attempting to lift the valise from the wagon it had fallen to the ground under its great weight. The inn-keeper shook his head and rubbed his hands. "Had a lucky voyage, I reckon," he concluded.
"More than eighty pounds of solid gold in that," returned Tite, coolly. The mention of so much gold astonished and delighted the inn-keeper.
"There'll be such a time when the town hears that!" said he. "There'll be enough o' them that'll call you their friend."
"Left three times as much more in the city," resumed Tite. "And there's enough on an island in the Pacific to buy a town as big as Nyack. And I know where it is."
"Eighty pounds of solid gold!" said the inn-keeper, looking enquiringly at Tite, then stooping down and testing the weight of the valise with his hands. "It's so. I always did know you'd come home a rich man."