The deeper he looked at the matter , the more certain of success grew Peter . His spirits were naturally so elastic that even now , in the blasted autumn of his age , he could often compete with the springtime gayety of other people . Enlivened by his brightening prospects , he began to caper about the kitchen like a hobgoblin , with the queerest antics of his lean limbs and gesticulations of his starved features . Nay , in the exuberance of his feelings , he seized both of Tabitha 's hands and danced the old lady across the floor till the oddity of her rheumatic motions set him into a roar of laughter , which was echoed back from the rooms and chambers , as if Peter Goldthwaite were laughing in every one . Finally , he bounded upward , almost out of sight , into the smoke that clouded the roof of the kitchen , and , alighting safely on the floor again , endeavored to resume his customary gravity . `` To-morrow , at sunrise , '' he repeated , taking his lamp to retire to bed , `` I 'll see whether this treasure be hid in the wall of the garret . '' `` And , as we 're out of wood , Mr. Peter , '' said Tabitha , puffing and panting with her late gymnastics , `` as fast as you tear the house down I 'll make a fire with the pieces . '' Gorgeous that night were the dreams of Peter Goldthwaite . At one time he was turning a ponderous key in an iron door not unlike the door of a sepulchre , but which , being opened , disclosed a vault heaped up with gold coin as plentifully as golden corn in a granary . There were chased goblets , also , and tureens , salvers , dinner-dishes and dish-covers of gold or silver-gilt , besides chains and other jewels , incalculably rich , though tarnished with the damps of the vault ; for , of all the wealth that was irrevocably lost to man , whether buried in the earth or sunken in the sea , Peter Goldthwaite had found it in this one treasure-place . Anon he had returned to the old house as poor as ever , and was received at the door by the gaunt and grizzled figure of a man whom he might have mistaken for himself , only that his garments were of a much elder fashion . But the house , without losing its former aspect , had been changed into a palace of the precious metals . The floors , walls and ceilings were of burnished silver ; the doors , the window-frames , the cornices , the balustrades and the steps of the staircase , of pure gold ; and silver , with gold bottoms , were the chairs , and gold , standing on silver legs , the high chests of drawers , and silver the bedsteads , with blankets of woven gold and sheets of silver tissue . The house had evidently been transmuted by a single touch , for it retained all the marks that Peter remembered , but in gold or silver instead of wood , and the initials of his name -- which when a boy he had cut in the wooden door-post -- remained as deep in the pillar of gold . A happy man would have been Peter Goldthwaite except for a certain ocular deception which , whenever he glanced backward , caused the house to darken from its glittering magnificence into the sordid gloom of yesterday . Up betimes rose Peter , seized an axe , hammer and saw which he had placed by his bedside , and hied him to the garret . It was but scantily lighted up as yet by the frosty fragments of a sunbeam which began to glimmer through the almost opaque bull-eyes of the window . A moralizer might find abundant themes for his speculative and impracticable wisdom in a garret . There is the limbo of departed fashions , aged trifles of a day and whatever was valuable only to one generation of men , and which passed to the garret when that generation passed to the grave -- not for safekeeping , but to be out of the way . Peter saw piles of yellow and musty account-books in parchment covers , wherein creditors long dead and buried had written the names of dead and buried debtors in ink now so faded that their moss-grown tombstones were more legible .
He found old moth-eaten garments , all in rags and tatters , or XXXXX would have put them on .
Peter account-books bedsteads cornices damps day hobgoblin moralizer night oddity