t
came, but she did not make her appearance: morning, noon, night
returned, but still she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her
safety, especially as he found she had carried off in her apron the
silver tea-pot and spoons, and every portable article of value.
Another night elapsed, another morning came; but no wife. In a word,
she was never heard of more.

What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence of so many
pretending to know. It is one of those facts which have become
confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her
way among the tangled mazes of the swamp, and sank into some pit or
slough; others, more charitable, hinted that she had eloped with the
household booty, and made off to some other province; while others
surmised that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire, on
the top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation of this, it
was said a great black man, with an ax on his shoulder, was seen late
that very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in
a check apron, with an air of surly triumph.

The most current and probable story, however, observes, that Tom
Walker grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property,
that he set out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort. During
a long summer's afternoon he searched about the gloomy place, but no
wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she was
nowhere to be heard. The bittern alone responded to his voice, as he
flew screaming by; or the bull-frog croaked dolefully from a
neighbouring pool. At length, it is said, just in the brown hour of
twilight, when the owls began to hoot, and the bats to flit about, his
attention was attracted by the clamour of carrion crows hovering about
a cypress-tree. He looked up, and beheld a bundle tied in a check
apron, and hanging in the branches of the tree, with a great vulture
perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy; for
he recognized his wife's apron, and supposed it to contain the
household valuables.

"Let us get hold of the property," said he, consolingly to himself,
"and we will endeavour to do without the woman."

As he scrambled up the tree, the vulture spread its wide wings, and
sailed off, screaming, into the deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized
the checked apron, but, woeful sight! found nothing but a heart and
liver tied up in it!

Such, according to this most authentic old story, was