"Where on arth are you two come from?" enquired the woman, in a surly tone, as she raised her broom. "Another lot o' fools com'd to look for Mr. Kidd's money," she continued, without waiting for a reply. "Seems as if all the folks atween this and Yonkers had got crazy about Mr. Kidd, and was a comin' up here to dig for his money."

The men confessed that she was right in regard to their mission, and begged that she would get them some breakfast, for which they would pay her liberally.

"Yes!" rejoined the woman, angrily, "I know'd what you'd cum fur. Thar ain't nothin' in this house to get breakfast on - nothin' fur my poor old man and the two little children. Work's hard to get up here. And them fools what comes up here to dig for Mr. Kidd's money eat up what little we had, and did'nt pay fur it, nither. Go home, like honest men, and get some honester work than comin' up here thinkin' you kin find Mr. Kidd's money. Don't believe in Mr. Kidd - I don't!" The woman kept swinging her broom as she spoke. Then the two children ventured back and peered from behind her skirts at the strangers. "Don't believe he had any money, anyhow. If he had he was a mighty fool to come up here and bury it. People round here would 'a stole every dollar on it long ago. There's a Yankee and a Dutchman diggin' a big hole a piece above here - expectin' to find Mr. Kidd's money."

Such was the reception these boatmen met with at the hands of Mrs. Brophy, whose husband, a short, thick-shouldered, bullet-headed son of the Emerald Isle, with a short, black pipe in his wide mouth, and in his shirt and trousers, came to the door and seated himself on the sill.

"Is it Misther Kidd's money ye's is afther?" he enquired, querulously, putting his elbows on his knees and resting his head in his hands. "Much luck may ye's have finding it. Divel a cint meself iver saw uv Misther Kidd's money, an' we've liv'd here this two years an' more. It's mighty little uv any other man's money - not enough, troth, to get bread for the childher - have we seen."

The boatmen enquired of Mr. Brophy if he could tell them where the devil's sounding-stone was. There was indeed a superstition amongst these poor people that Kidd had buried his money under a rock he gave that name to; and that there was an agreement with his satanic majesty, who was to stand guard over it, and allow only those who had the talisman to lay hands on it. This talisman, it was also believed, would open the devil's conscience, and cause him to lift the stone and unlock the great iron chest containing the gold and silver. Loud noises, it was said, were heard under the stone, which was the voice of the devil rebuking the follies of the men who came in search of this treasure. These poor people also believed that Kidd had murdered a woman in cold blood, and buried her under the same stone; that she would come to life when it was lifted; and that her ghost haunted the spot every night, and not less than a score of Dutchmen had seen it. The more religious of them declared that the ghost would hold communion only with a certain priest, who came once a year, at midnight, to invoke in an unknown tongue a blessing on her troubled spirit.