e, found the old gentleman there
before them, storming up and down in a great pother opposite the
portrait of his wife, long dead and gone, trying to shake the panel on
which it was painted from its setting in the carved wood of the wall, so
that half the world believed that the worthy, having failed to find his
departed spouse in the spirit-land, had indignantly returned to loosen
her ghost from the painting in which some cunning artist had imprisoned
it, and the other half declared that certain deeds and records had been
concealed between the panel and the chimney-bricks, which the General
wished to dislodge; but, as no one knew of any deed or record missing,
the matter had slipped by. Or, if Miss Helen's conjecture wearied on
that, she might take the rumor concerning a Revolutionary Fotherington,
who, being a noted Tory, had seen fit both to eat his cake and have it,
and had accordingly buried a great pot of golden Spanish pieces in the
garden, and marked the spot with the young slip of a St. Michael's
pear-tree. There stood the old St. Michael's at this day, a dead trunk,
having long since ceased to bear either fruit or blossom or leaf; and
many a time had Helen persuaded Margaret and Frederick to take hoe and
shovel and go with her to dig round the roots of the old St. Michael's.
Once, after the first digging, the ancient tree surprised them by
bursting into a cloud of blossoms, and bearing a crop of golden, juicy
pears; but that was the last sign of life it ever gave, and all the gold
they ever found. There, too, had been the wide, dark-eaved garrets full
of moth-devoured relics of splendor; who knew what might be lying hidden
in those vast hair-covered chests? They were there no longer now; for
once, in an access of angry irreverence, Margaret had had them all
dragged down, and had sold their contents to the rag-man, and had made
by her speculation cloaks for themselves and a shawl for Frederick,--in
the days when gentlemen condescended to lend to their stiff costume the
graceful dignity of a dropping fold or two. But what treasures of
parchment might not have been quilted into any one of those old brocaded
petticoats? and who knew the unrevealed wealth of that trunk of yellowed
papers, that had brought only the sum of ten dollars in the rag-man's
scales? More than once Helen had started at the rap at the door, half
expecting an announcement that such and such a document had been found
among that heap of trumpery,