“Not changed, but quite decided;” returned the young Patroon.  “I cannot say that I wish the successor of my mother to have seen so much of the world.  We are a family that is content with our situation, and new customs would derange my household.”

“I am no wizard, Sir; but for the benefit of a son of my old friend Stephanus Van Staats, I will venture, for once, on a prophecy.  You will marry, Mr. Van Staats—­yes, marry—­and you will wive, Sir, with—­prudence prevents me from saying with whom you will wive; but you may account yourself a lucky man, if it be not with one who will cause you to forget house and home, lands and friends, manors and rents, and in short all the solid comforts of life.  It would not surprise me to hear that the prediction of the Poughkeepsie fortune-teller should be fulfilled!”

“And what is your real opinion, Alderman Van Beverout, of the different mysterious events we have witnessed?” demanded the Patroon, in a manner to prove that the interest he took in the subject, completely smothered any displeasure he might otherwise have felt at so harsh a prophecy.  “This sea-green lady is no common woman!”

“Sea-green and sky-blue!” interrupted the impatient burgher.  “The hussy is but too common, Sir; and there is the calamity.  Had she been satisfied with transacting her concerns in a snug and reasonable manner, and to have gone upon the high seas again, we should have had none of this foolery, to disturb accounts which ought to have been considered settled.  Mr. Van Staats, will you allow me to ask a few direct questions, if you can find leisure for their answer?”

The Patroon nodded his head, in the affirmative.

“What do you suppose, Sir, to have become of my niece?”

“Eloped.”

“And with whom?”

Van Staats of Kinderhook stretched an arm towards the open ocean, and again nodded.  The Alderman mused a moment; and then he chuckled, as if some amusing idea had at once gotten the better of his ill-humor.

“Come, come, Patroon,” he said, in his wonted amicable tone, when addressing the lord of a hundred thousand acres, “this business is like a complicated account, a little difficult till one gets acquainted with the books, and then all becomes plain as your hand.  There were referees in the settlement of the estate of Kobus Van Klinck, whom I will not name; but what between the handwriting of the old grocer, and some inaccuracy in the figures, they had but a blind time of it until they discovered which way the balance ought to come; and then by working backward and forward, which is the true spirit of your just referee, they got all straight in the end.  Kobus was not very lucid in his statements, and he was a little apt to be careless of ink.  His leger might be called a book of the black art; for it was little else than fly-tracks and blots, though the last were found of great assistance in rendering the statements satisfactory.  By calling three of the biggest