changed about his establishment. His bustling presence, with his bantering,
off-hand, and communicative talk, no longer enlivened the store and
neighborhood; and people, who before seemed to know every thing about his
business and plans, now knew nothing. For he was now most of the time
absent in conducting his operations at the north, or in his stealthy
journeyings thence to the cities, to receive and dispose of the valuable
packages which he had put on their passage. He generally came and departed
in the night, and, even during his brief stays at home, he kept himself
secluded, seeming to wish to be seen as little as possible. All this, of
course, led to considerable talk and various speculations; but he so well
shrouded his movements from the public, and kept afloat so many plausible
stories to account for his change of business, that he prevented suspicions
from taking any definite shape about home, or spreading abroad to any
extent that endangered his operations, although those operations were
constantly continued for years, and, from cautious and small beginnings, at
length became more bold, extensive, and successful, perhaps, than any thing
of the kind ever carried on in the interior of New England. But there was
one whose suspicions of the true character of the business in which he was
engaged, notwithstanding his denials and evasions, even to her, and whose
fears and anxieties on account of the dangers she believed he was
constantly incurring, not only from seizure of his property and the
personal violence to which he was exposed in trying to defend it, but from
his association of reckless confederates, especially Gaut Gurley, of whose
dark character, as little as she had seen of him, she was already filled
with an instinctive dread,--there was one whose suspicions, and consequent
anxieties, he could never succeed in quieting; and that was his discreet
and faithful wife. She had, during the first year or two of his new career,
often expostulated with him on the doubtful character of his business; but
he, by always making light of her fears, by telling her some truth and
withholding more, and disclosing as great a part of his astonishing gains