Chapter 18 - Page 2

grandmothers were cousins, and there
should be charities in the same blood."

"I could not wish to press my suit," returned the Patroon, "when the lady
has given so direct a hint that it is disagreeable--"

"Hint me no hints! Do you call this caprice of a moment, this trifling, as
the captain here would call it, with the winds and tides, a hint! The girl
has Norman blood in her veins, and she wishes to put animation into the
courtship. If bargains were to be interrupted by a little cheapening of
the buyer, and some affectation of waiting for a better market in the
seller, Her Majesty might as well order her custom-houses to be closed at
once, and look to other sources for revenue. Let the girl's fancy have its
swing, and the profits of a year's peltry against thy rent-roll, we shall
see her penitent for her folly, and willing to hear reason. My sister's
daughter is no witch, to go journeying for ever about the world, on a
broomstick!"

"There is a tradition in our family," said Oloff Van Staats, his eye
lighting with a mysterious excitement, while he affected to laugh at the
folly he uttered, "that the great Poughkeepsie fortune-teller foretold, in
the presence of my grandmother, that a Patroon of Kinderhook should
intermarry with a witch. So, should I see la Belle in the position you
name, it would not greatly alarm me."

"The prophecy was fulfilled at the wedding of thy father!" muttered
Myndert, who, notwithstanding the outward levity with which he treated the
subject, was not entirely free from secret reverence for the provincial
soothsayers, some of whom continued in high repute, even to the close of
the last century. "His son would not else have been so clever a youth! But
here is Captain Ludlow looking at the ocean, as if he expected to see my
niece rise out of the water, in the shape of a mermaid."

The commander of the Coquette pointed to the object which attracted his
gaze, and which, appearing as it did at that moment, was certainly not of
a nature to lessen the faith of either of his companions in supernatural
agencies.

It has been said that the wind was dry and the air misty, or rather so
pregnant with a thin haze, as to give it the appearance of a dull, smoky
light. In such a state of the weather, the eye, more especially of one
placed on an elevation, is unable to distinguish what is termed the
visible horizon at sea. The two elements become so blended, that our
organs cannot tell where the water ends, or where the void of the heavens
commences. It is a consequence of this in distinctness, that any object
seen beyond the apparent boundary of water, has the appearance of floating
in the air. It is rare for