No sooner did this idea enter his head, than it carried conviction with it.  He was now all impatience to hurry back and secure the treasure, which, he did not doubt, lay at the bottom of the well, and which he feared every moment might be discovered by some other person.  “Who knows,” thought he, “but this night-walking old fellow of the haunted house may be in the habit of haunting every visitor, and may give a hint to some shrewder fellow than myself, who will take a shorter cut to the well than by the way of Albany?” He wished a thousand times that the babbling old ghost was laid in the Red Sea, and his rambling portrait with him.  He was in a perfect fever to depart.  Two or three days elapsed before any opportunity presented for returning down the river.  They were ages to Dolph, notwithstanding that he was basking in the smiles of the pretty Marie, and daily getting more and more enamoured.

At length the very sloop from which he had been knocked overboard, prepared to make sail.  Dolph made an awkward apology to his host for his sudden departure.  Antony Vander Heyden was sorely astonished.  He had concerted half-a-dozen excursions into the wilderness; and his Indians were actually preparing for a grand expedition to one of the lakes.  He took Dolph aside, and exerted his eloquence to get him to abandon all thoughts of business, and to remain with him—­but in vain; and he at length gave up the attempt, observing, “that it was a thousand pities so fine a young man should throw himself away.”  Heer Antony, however, gave him a hearty shake by the hand at parting, with a favourite fowling-piece, and an invitation to come to his house whenever he revisited Albany.  The pretty little Marie said nothing; but as he gave her a farewell kiss, her dimpled cheek turned pale, and a tear stood in her eye.

Dolph sprang lightly on board of the vessel.  They hoisted sail; the wind was fair; they soon lost sight of Albany, and its green hills, and embowered islands.  They were wafted gayly past the Kaatskill mountains, whose fairy heights were bright and cloudless.  They passed prosperously through the highlands, without any molestation from the Dunderberg goblin and his crew; they swept on across Haverstraw Bay, and by Croton Point, and through the Tappaan Zee, and under the Palisadoes, until, in the afternoon of the third day, they saw the promontory of Hoboken, hanging like a cloud in the air; and, shortly after, the roofs of the Manhattoes rising out of the water.

Dolph’s first care was to repair to his mother’s house; for he was continually goaded by the idea of the uneasiness she must experience on his account.  He was puzzling his brains, as he went along, to think how he should account for his absence, without betraying the secrets of the haunted house.  In the midst of these cogitations, he entered the street in which his mother’s house was situated, when he was thunderstruck at beholding it a heap of ruins.