but damme if you
shall handle it. I would not," he would cry, "let the Devil himself
take it out of my hands."

The talk concerning the impious possession of the Old Free Grace
Meeting-House was at its height when the official consciousness of the
Collector, who was just then laboring under his constitutional
infirmity, became suddenly seized with an irrepressible alarm. He
declared that he smoked something worse than the Devil upon Pig and Sow
Point, and protested that it was his opinion that Captain Obadiah was
doing a bit of free-trade upon his own account, and that dutiable goods
were being smuggled in at night under cover of these incredible
stories. He registered a vow, sealing it with the most solemn
protestations, and with a multiplicity of ingenious oaths that only a
mind stimulated by the heat of intoxication could have invented, that
he would make it his business, upon the first occasion that offered, to
go down to Pig and Sow Point and to discover for himself whether it was
the Devil or smugglers that had taken possession of the Old Free Grace
Meeting-House. Thereupon, hauling out his precious snuffbox and rapping
upon the lid, he offered a pinch around. Then calling attention to the
inscription, he demanded to know whether a man who had behaved so well
upon that occasion had need to be afraid of a whole churchful of
devils. "I would," he cried, "offer the Devil a pinch, as I have
offered it to you. Then I would bid him read this and tell me whether
he dared to say that black was the white of my eye."

Nor were those words a vain boast upon the Collector's part, for,
before a week had passed, it being reported that there had been a
renewal of manifestations at the old church, the Collector, finding
nobody with sufficient courage to accompany him, himself entered into a
small boat and rowed down alone to Pig and Sow Point to investigate,
for his own satisfaction, those appearances that so agitated the
community.

It was dusk when the Collector departed upon that memorable and
solitary expedition, and it was entirely dark before he had reached its
conclusion. He had taken with him a bottle of Extra Reserve rum to
drive, as he declared, the chill out of his bones. Accordingly it
seemed to him to be a surprisingly brief interval before he found
himself floating in his boat under the impenetrable shadow of the rocky
promontory. The profound and infinite gloom of night overhung him with
a portentous darkness,