In the morning when Dolph waked, he found his host standing by his bed-side, who gave him a hearty morning’s salutation, and asked him how he had slept.  Dolph answered cheerily; but took occasion to inquire about the portrait that hung against the wall.  “Ah,” said Heer Antony, “that’s a portrait of old Killian Vander Spiegel, once a burgomaster of Amsterdam, who, on some popular troubles, abandoned Holland and came over to the province during the government of Peter Stuyvesant.  He was my ancestor by the mother’s side, and an old miserly curmudgeon he was.  When the English took possession of New-Amsterdam in 1664, he retired into the country.  He fell into a melancholy, apprehending that his wealth would be taken from him and that he would come to beggary.  He turned all his property into cash, and used to hide it away.  He was for a year or two concealed in various places, fancying himself sought after by the English, to strip him of his wealth; and finally was found dead in his bed one morning, without any one being able to discover where he had concealed the greater part of his money.”

When his host had left the room, Dolph remained for some time lost in thought.  His whole mind was occupied by what he had heard.  Vander Spiegel was his mother’s family name; and he recollected to have heard her speak of this very Killian Vander Spiegel as one of her ancestors.  He had heard her say, too, that her father was Kollian’s rightful heir, only that the old man died without leaving any thing to be inherited.  It now appeared that Heer Antony was likewise a descendant, and perhaps an heir also, of this poor rich man; and that thus the Heyligers and the Vander Heydens were remotely connected.  “What,” thought he, “if, after all, this is the interpretation of my dream, that this is the way I am to make my fortune by this voyage to Albany, and that I am to find the old man’s hidden wealth in the bottom of that well?  But what an odd, round-about mode of communicating the matter!  Why the plague could not the old goblin have told me about the well at once, without sending me all the way to Albany to hear a story that was to send me all the way back again?”

These thoughts passed through his mind while he was dressing.  He descended the stairs, full of perplexity, when the bright face of Marie Vander Heyden suddenly beamed in smiles upon him, and seemed to give him a clue to the whole mystery.  “After all,” thought he, “the old goblin is in the right.  If I am to get his wealth, he means that I shall marry his pretty descendant; thus both branches of the family will be again united, and the property go on in the proper channel.”