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And while they were doing this, and wondering what this night expedition really meant, Hanz smoked his pipe and nursed his courage. In his heart, however, he wished himself out of the affair and in a more honest occupation. As for Chapman, he told a number of stories tended to excite the cupidity of the boatmen.
The good news gave an additional charm to the evening's entertainment. One after another shook Hanz and Angeline by the hand, and congratulated them on the happy prospect. Indeed, they seemed the happiest people on earth.
Angeline was even more troubled than Hanz, and listened with fear and trembling to the words as they fell from Chapman's lips. What could have worked this change in a person who had so recently expressed such friendship for them? Her pure, unsuspecting soul would not permit her to entertain the belief that her husband could do wrong.
I verily believe that the time of one-half of the human family is engaged seeking scandal in the misfortunes of the other. And I have always found that you got the ripest scandal in the smallest villages; and Nyack was not an exception. No wonder, then, that Hanz had to bear his share of that slander which one-half the world puts on the other.
And when the merry men came along with their oxen, and their sledges, and their drag-logs, ploughing through and tossing the snow aside, and making a way for the traveller, there were cheers given for honest Hanz and the little gentleman who had just come to town.
Honest men don't do such things never! Mr. Toodlebug. I thought you were a friend; but you have deceived me have deceived us all!" The plot was now beginning to develop itself, and Hanz for the first time began to see what a singular chain of adverse circumstances Chapman had drawn around him. Never before in his life had a man openly charged him with doing wrong.
Others said it was all clear enough now where Hanz Toodleburg got his dollars and his doubloons. It was no wonder that he was so much better off than his neighbors. Another declared that he had more than once told Hanz he would never get to heaven, and that secret on his mind.
I have been thus particular in describing Hanz Toodleburg's little home, since it was the birth-place of Titus Bright Von Toodleburg, who flourished at a more recent date as the head of a very distinguished family in New York, and whose fortunes and misfortunes it is my object to chronicle.
"Verily, good neighbor Hanz," said he, after greeting the old people with a hearty shake of the hand, "the people have had strange news to talk about for a week past." Critchel shook his head, looked serious, and taking Hanz by the arm, drew him aside. "This Chapman has fallen to the ground, they say." "Mine friend Critchel," returned Hanz, leaning on his staff, and casting a look upward.
As the ship neared Nyack a group of ten or a dozen persons were seen near the landing, with a boat and two men to take Tite off. There was Hanz, old and grey; and Angeline, her eyes filled with tears, but her face as full of sweetness and tenderness as it was twenty years ago. Tite had been the joy and hope of her life.
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