It is always the case, however, that one truth concealed makes a
dozen current lies. It is like a guinea locked up in a bank, that has
a dozen paper representatives. Before the day was over, the
neighbourhood was full of reports. Some said that Dolph Heyliger
watched in the haunted house with pistols loaded with silver bullets;
others, that he had a long talk with the spectre without a head;
others, that Doctor Knipperhausen and the sexton had been hunted down
the Bowery lane, and quite into town, by a legion of ghosts of their
customers. Some shook their heads, and thought it a shame that the
doctor should put Dolph to pass the night alone in that dismal house,
where he might be spirited away, no one knew whither; while others
observed, with a shrug, that if the devil did carry off the youngster,
it would be but taking his own.
These rumours at length reached the ears of the good Dame Heyliger,
and, as may be supposed, threw her into a terrible alarm. For her son
to have opposed himself to danger from living foes, would have been
nothing so dreadful in her eyes as to dare alone the terrors of the
haunted house. She hastened to the doctor's, and passed a great part
of the day in attempting to dissuade Dolph from repeating his vigil;
she told him a score of tales, which her gossiping friends had just
related to her, of persons who had been carried off when watching
alone in old ruinous houses.
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