But there was one man, ridiculous beyond his generation, who got it into his head that a fortune was to be made out of these same guns.  To buy them all, to hold on to them until war was declared again (as he had no doubt it would be in a few months), and then sell out at fabulous prices—­this was the daring idea that addled the pate of Silas Trefethen, “Dealer in E. & W. I. Goods and Groceries,” as the faded sign over his shop-door informed the public.

Silas went shrewdly to work, buying up every old cannon he could lay hands on.  His back-yard was soon crowded with broken-down gun-carriages, and his barn with guns, like an arsenal.  When Silas’s purpose got wind it was astonishing how valuable that thing became which just now was worth nothing at all.

“Ha, ha!” thought Silas.  “Somebody else is tryin’ hi git control of the market.  But I guess I’ve got the start of him.”

So he went on buying and buying, oftentimes paying double the original price of the article.  People in the neighboring towns collected all the worthless ordnance they could find, and sent it by the cart-load to Rivermouth.

When his barn was full, Silas began piling the rubbish in his cellar, then in his parlor.  He mortgaged the stock of his grocery store, mortgaged his house, his barn, his horse, and would have mortgaged himself, if anyone would have taken him as security, in order to carry on the grand speculation.  He was a ruined man, and as happy as a lark.

Surely poor Silas was cracked, like the majority of his own cannon.  More or less crazy he must have been always.  Years before this he purchased an elegant rosewood coffin, and kept it in one of the spare rooms in his residence.  He even had his name engraved on the silver-plate, leaving a blank after the word “Died.”

The blank was filled up in due time, and well it was for Silas that he secured so stylish a coffin in his opulent days, for when he died his worldly wealth would not have bought him a pine box, to say nothing of rosewood.  He never gave up expecting a war with Great Britain.  Hopeful and radiant to the last, his dying words were, England—­war—­few days—­great profits!

It was that sweet old lady, Dame Jocelyn, who told me the story of Silas Trefethen; for these things happened long before my day.  Silas died in 1817.

At Trefethen’s death his unique collection came under the auctioneer’s hammer.  Some of the larger guns were sold to the town, and planted at the corners of divers streets; others went off to the iron-foundry; the balance, numbering twelve, were dumped down on a deserted wharf at the foot of Anchor Lane, where, summer after summer, they rested at their ease in the grass and fungi, pelted in autumn by the rain and annually buried by the winter snow.  It is with these twelve guns that our story has to deal.

The wharf where they reposed was shut off from the street by a high fence—­a silent dreamy old wharf, covered with strange weeds and mosses.  On account of its seclusion and the good fishing it afforded, it was much frequented by us boys.