believe it? scarce had I finished my fine new house up at the Point when hither comes that evil being to whom I had sold my sorrowful soul.  ‘Obadiah,’ says he, ’Obadiah Belford, I have a mind to live in New Hope also,’ ‘Where?’ says I.  ‘Well,’ says he, ’you may patch up the old meetinghouse; ‘twill serve my turn for a while.’  ‘Well,’ thinks I to myself, ‘there can be no harm in that,’ And so I did as he bade me—­ and would not you do as much for one who had served you as well?  Alas, your reverence! there he is now, and I cannot get rid of him, and ’tis over the whole town that he has the meeting-house in possession.”

“Tis an incredible story!” cried the Reverend Pettibones.

“’Tis a lie from beginning to end!” cried the Colonel.

“And now how shall I get myself out of my pickle?” asked Captain Obadiah.

“Sir,” said Mr. Pettibones, “if what you tell me is true, ’tis beyond my poor powers to aid you.”

“Alas!” cried Captain Obadiah.  “Alas! alas!  Then, indeed, I’m damned!” And therewith flinging his arms into the air as though in the extremity of despair, he turned and incontinently departed, rushing forth out of the house as though stung by ten thousand furies.

It was the most prodigious piece of gossip that ever fell in the way of the Reverend Josiah, and for a fortnight he carried it with him wherever he went. “’Twas the most unbelievable tale I ever heard,” he would cry.  “And yet where there is so much smoke there must be some fire.  As for the poor wretch, if ever I saw a lost soul I beheld him standing before me there in Colonel Belford’s library.”  And then he would conclude:  “Yes, yes, ’tis incredible and past all belief.  But if it be true in ever so little a part, why, then there is justice in this—­that the Devil should take possession of the sanctuary of that very heresy that would not only have denied him the power that every other Christian belief assigns to him, but would have destroyed that infernal habitation that hath been his dwelling-place for all eternity.”

As for Captain Belford, if he desired privacy for himself upon Pig and Sow Point, he had taken the very best means to prevent the curious from spying upon him there after nightfall.

II

HOW THE DEVIL STOLE THE COLLECTOR’S SNUFFBOX

Lieutenant Thomas Goodhouse was the Collector of Customs in the town of New Hope.  He was a character of no little notoriety in those parts, enjoying the reputation of being able to consume more pineapple rum with less effect upon his balance than any other man in the community.  He possessed the voice of a stentor, a short, thick-set, broad-shouldered person, a face congested to a violent carnation, and red hair of such a color as to add infinitely to the consuming fire of his countenance.

The Custom Office was a little white frame building with green shutters, and overhanging the water as though to topple into the tide.  Here at any time of the day betwixt the hours of ten in the morning and of five in the afternoon the Collector was to be found at his desk smoking his pipe of tobacco, the while a thin, phthisical clerk bent with unrelaxing assiduity over a multitude of account-books and papers accumulated before him.