第62章

But this was momentary. Peter, the Destroyer, resumed the taskwhich fate had assigned him, nor faltered again till it wasaccomplished. In the course of his search, he met with many thingsthat are usually found in the ruins of an old house, and also withsome that are not. What seemed most to the purpose was a rusty key,which had been thrust into a chink of the wall, with a wooden labelappended to the handle, bearing the initials, P. G. Another singulardiscovery was that of a bottle of wine, walled up in an old oven. Atradition ran in the family, that Peter's grandfather, a jovialofficer in the old French War, had set aside many dozens of theprecious liquor for the benefit of topers then unborn. Peter needed nocordial to sustain his hopes, and therefore kept the wine to gladdenhis success. Many halfpence did he pick up, that had been lost throughthe cracks of the floor, and some few Spanish coins, and the half of abroken sixpence, which had doubtless been a love token. There waslikewise a silver coronation medal of George the Third. But oldPeter Goldthwaite's strong box fled from one dark corner to another,or otherwise eluded the second Peter's clutches, till, should heseek much farther, he must burrow into the earth.

We will not follow him in his triumphant progress, step by step.

Suffice it that Peter worked like a steam-engine, and finished, inthat one winter, the job which all the former inhabitants of thehouse, with time and the elements to aid them, had only half done in acentury. Except the kitchen, every room and chamber was now gutted.

The house was nothing but a shell- the apparition of a house- asunreal as the painted edifices of a theatre. It was like the perfectrind of a great cheese, in which a mouse had dwelt and nibbled till itwas a cheese no more. And Peter was the mouse.

What Peter had torn down, Tabitha had burned up; for she wiselyconsidered that, without a house, they should need no wood to warm it;and therefore economy was nonsense. Thus the whole house might be saidto have dissolved in smoke, and flown up among the clouds, through thegreat black flue of the kitchen chimney. It was an admirableparallel to the feat of the man who jumped down his own throat.

On the night between the last day of winter and the first ofspring, every chink and cranny had been ransacked, except within theprecincts of the kitchen. This fated evening was an ugly one. Asnow-storm had set in some hours before, and was still driven andtossed about the atmosphere by a real hurricane, which foughtagainst the house as if the prince of the air, in person, were puttingthe final stroke to Peter's labors. The framework being so muchweakened, and the inward props removed, it would have been no marvelif, in some stronger wrestle of the blast, the rotten walls of theedifice, and all the peaked roofs, had come crushing down upon theowner's head. He, however, was careless of the peril, but as wildand restless as the night itself, or as the flame that quivered up thechimney at each roar of the tempestuous wind.

"The wine, Tabitha!" he cried. "My grandfather's rich old wine!

We will drink it now!"

Tabitha arose from her smoke-blackened bench in the chimney-corner,and placed the bottle before Peter, close beside the old brass lamp,which had likewise been the prize of his researches. Peter held itbefore his eyes, and, looking through the liquid medium, beheld thekitchen illuminated with a golden glory, which also envelopedTabitha and gilded her silver hair, and converted her mean garmentsinto robes of queenly splendor. It reminded him of his golden dream.

"Mr. Peter," remarked Tabitha, "must the wine be drunk before themoney is found?""The money is found!" exclaimed Peter, with a sort of fierceness.

"The chest is within my reach. I will not sleep, till I have turnedthis key in the rusty lock. But, first of all, let us drink!"There being no corkscrew in the house, he smote the neck of thebottle with old Peter Goldthwaite's rusty key, and decapitated thesealed cork at a single blow. He then filled two little china teacups,which Tabitha had brought from the cupboard. So clear and brilliantwas this aged wine that it shone within the cups, and rendered thesprig of scarlet flowers, at the bottom of each, more distinctlyvisible than when there had been no wine there. Its rich anddelicate perfume wasted itself round the kitchen.

"Drink, Tabitha!" cried Peter. "Blessings on the honest oldfellow who set aside this good liquor for you and me! And here's toPeter Goldthwaite's memory!""And good cause have we to remember him," quoth Tabitha, as shedrank.

How many years, and through what changes of fortune and variouscalamity, had that bottle hoarded up its effervescent joy, to bequaffed at last by two such boon companions! A portion of thehappiness of the former age had been kept for them, and was now setfree, in a crowd of rejoicing visions, to sport amid the storm anddesolation of the present time. Until they have finished the bottle,we must turn our eyes elsewhere.

It so chanced that, on this stormy night, Mr. John Brown foundhimself ill at ease in his wire-cushioned arm-chair, by the glowinggrate of anthracite which heated his handsome parlor. He was naturallya good sort of a man, and kind and pitiful whenever the misfortunes ofothers happened to reach his heart through the padded vest of hisown prosperity. This evening he had thought much about his oldpartner, Peter Goldthwaite, his strange vagaries, and continual illluck, the poverty of his dwelling, at Mr. Brown's last visit, andPeter's crazed and haggard aspect when he had talked with him at thewindow.