man of high hopes just entering on the world.  At the kindling of each new fire his burnt-out youth rose afresh from the old embers and ashes.  It rose exulting now.  Having lived thus long—­not too long, but just to the right age—­a susceptible bachelor with warm and tender dreams, he resolved, so soon as the hidden gold should flash to light, to go a-wooing and win the love of the fairest maid in town.  What heart could resist him?  Happy Peter Goldthwaite!

Every evening—­as Peter had long absented himself from his former lounging-places at insurance offices, news-rooms, and book-stores, and as the honor of his company was seldom requested in private circles—­he and Tabitha used to sit down sociably by the kitchen hearth.  This was always heaped plentifully with the rubbish of his day’s labor.  As the foundation of the fire there would be a goodly-sized back-log of red oak, which after being sheltered from rain or damp above a century still hissed with the heat and distilled streams of water from each end, as if the tree had been cut down within a week or two.  Next there were large sticks, sound, black and heavy, which had lost the principle of decay and were indestructible except by fire, wherein they glowed like red-hot bars of iron.  On this solid basis Tabitha would rear a lighter structure, composed of the splinters of door-panels, ornamented mouldings, and such quick combustibles, which caught like straw and threw a brilliant blaze high up the spacious flue, making its sooty sides visible almost to the chimney-top.  Meantime, the gloom of the old kitchen would be chased out of the cobwebbed corners and away from the dusky cross-beams overhead, and driven nobody could tell whither, while Peter smiled like a gladsome man and Tabitha seemed a picture of comfortable age.  All this, of course, was but an emblem of the bright fortune which the destruction of the house would shed upon its occupants.

While the dry pine was flaming and crackling like an irregular discharge of fairy-musketry, Peter sat looking and listening in a pleasant state of excitement; but when the brief blaze and uproar were succeeded by the dark-red glow, the substantial heat and the deep singing sound which were to last throughout the evening, his humor became talkative.  One night—­the hundredth time—­he teased Tabitha to tell him something new about his great-granduncle.

“You have been sitting in that chimney-corner fifty-five years, old Tabby, and must have heard many a tradition about him,” said Peter.  “Did not you tell me that when you first came to the house there was an old woman sitting where you sit now who had been housekeeper to the famous Peter Goldthwaite?”

“So there was, Mr. Peter,” answered Tabitha, “and she was near about a hundred years old.  She used to say that she and old Peter Goldthwaite had often spent a sociable evening by the kitchen fire—­pretty much as you and I are doing now, Mr. Peter.”

“The old fellow must have resembled me in more points than one,” said Peter, complacently, “or he never would have grown so rich.  But methinks he might have invested the money better than he did.  No interest! nothing but good security! and the house to be torn down to come at it!  What made him hide it so snug, Tabby?”