CHAPTER XXI.
COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS.
The Great Discovery Company had run its race of prosperity. A few months passed, and the prospects of those connected with it began to change. Chapman went about Nyack shaking his head despondingly, and saying that he had been deceived by Hanz Toodleburg, who had deceived them all with his story about Kidd's treasure, and would be the cause of their losing a large amount of money.
"I never would have been caught in such a trap, but I believed Hanz Toodleburg to be an honest man, a very honest man, and I put faith in his word. But I have been deceived. Well, it is not the first time my confidence has been abused in this way," Chapman would say, holding up his hands, while his face assumed an expression of injured innocence.
Hanz, on the other hand, protested his innocence. Never in all his life, he said, had he taken a dollar of money not his own, and honestly made. He was persuaded to do what he had done by the gentlemen whom he supposed engaged in an honest enterprise. In truth, he had never suspected them of a design to get honest people's money in a dishonest way.
"If I toos t' shentlemens a favors, und ta makes t' money, und I makes no money, und t' peoples don't get no money pack, what I cot t' do mit him?" Hanz would say, when accused by the settlers of aiding designing men to get their hard earnings. But all he could say and protest did not relieve him of the suspicion that he was a participant in getting up the enterprise. In short, there was the old story of his knowledge of where Kidd's treasure was buried lending color of truth to the statements made to his injury by Chapman.
The innocent Dutch settlers would gather at Bright's inn of an evening, smoke their pipes, mutter their discontent at the way things had turned, compare their "equivalents," and relate how much saving it had cost them to get the money thrown away on them. If it had not been for Hanz Toodleburg, they said, not a man of them would have believed a word of the story about Mr. Kidd and his money. Indeed, they would insist on laying all their sorrows at Hanz's door.
Chapman had also circulated a report, which had gained belief among the settlers, that the trouble was caused by the devil refusing to surrender the key of the big iron chest; that he had been heard under sounding-rock, making terrible noises, and threatening to destroy every man working in the shaft. Then it was said that the ghost had reappeared and so frightened the men that they had refused to work. Another story was set afloat that the bottom had fallen out of the pit, and the iron chest containing the treasure had sunk beyond recovery. The simple fact was that the cunning fellows never expected to find a dollar.