The Doctor Listened To Their Statement Of The Symptoms Of
Wolfert's Malady With Profound Attention; But When They Came To Mention
His Raving About Buried Money, The Little Man Pricked Up His Ears.
Alas, Poor Women!
They little knew the aid they had called in.
Dr. Knipperhausen had been half his life engaged in seeking the short
cuts to fortune, in quest of which so many a long lifetime is wasted.
He had passed some years of his youth in the Harz mountains of Germany,
and had derived much valuable instruction from the miners, touching the
mode of seeking treasure buried in the earth. He had prosecuted his
studies also under a travelling sage who united all the mysteries of
medicine with magic and legerdemain. His mind, therefore, had become
stored with all kinds of mystic lore: he had dabbled a little in
astrology, alchemy, and divination; knew how to detect stolen money,
and to tell where springs of water lay hidden; in a word, by the dark
nature of his knowledge he had acquired the name of the High German
doctor, which is pretty nearly equivalent to that of necromancer. The
doctor had often heard rumors of treasure being buried in various parts
of the island, and' had long been anxious to get on the traces of it.
No sooner were Wolfert's waking and sleeping vagaries confided to him,
than he beheld in them the confirmed symptoms of a case of
money-digging, and lost no time in probing it to the bottom.
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