was so fond of talking about. He was buried
in a comer of his own little potato-patch; the plough soon passed over
his grave, and levelled it with the rest of the field, and nobody
thought any more of the gray-headed negro. By a singular chance, I was
strolling in that neighbourhood several years afterwards, when I had
grown up to be a young man, and I found a knot of gossips speculating
on a skull which had just been turned up by a ploughshare. They of
course determined it to be the remains of some one that had been
murdered, and they had raked up with it some of the traditionary tales
of the haunted house. I knew it at once to be the relic of poor
Pompey, but I held my tongue; for I am too considerate of other
people's enjoyment, ever to mar a story of a ghost or a murder. I took
care, however, to see the bones of my old friend once more buried in a
place where they were not likely to be disturbed. As I sat on the turf
and watched the interment, I fell into a long conversation with an old
gentleman of the neighbourhood, John Josse Vandermoere, a pleasant
gossiping man, whose whole life was spent in hearing and telling the
news of the province. He recollected old Pompey, and his stories about
the Haunted House; but he assured me he could give me one still more
strange than any that Pompey had related: and on my expressing a great
curiosity to hear it, he sat down beside me on the turf, and told the
following tale. I have endeavoured to give it as nearly as possible in
his words; but it is now many years since, and I am grown old, and my
memory is not over-good, I cannot therefore vouch for the language,
but I am always scrupulous as to facts.

DOLPH HEYLIGER.

"I take the town of Concord, where I dwell,
All Kilborn be my witness, if I were not
Begot in bashfulness, brought up in shamefacedness.
Let 'un bring a dog but to my vace that can
Zay I have beat 'un, and without a vault;
Or but a cat will swear upon a book,
I have as much as zet a vire her tail,
And I'll give him or her a crown for 'mends."

--_Tale of a Tub_.

In the early time of the province of New-York, while it groaned under
the tyranny of the English governor, Lord Cornbury, who carried his
cruelties towards the Dutch inhabitants so far as to allow no Dominie,
or schoolmaster, to officiate in their language, without his special
license; about this time, there lived in the jolly little old city of
the Manhattoes, a kind mot