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 Peter would have put them on . Here was a naked and rusty sword -- not a sword of service , but a gentleman 's small French rapier -- which had never left its scabbard till it lost it . Here were canes of twenty different sorts , but no gold-headed ones , and shoebuckles of various pattern and material , but not silver nor set with precious stones . Here was a large box full of shoes with high heels and peaked toes . Here , on a shelf , were a multitude of phials half filled with old apothecary 's stuff which , when the other half had done its business on Peter 's ancestors , had been brought hither from the death-chamber . Here -- not to give a longer inventory of articles that will never be put up at auction -- was the fragment of a full-length looking-glass which by the dust and dimness of its surface made the picture of these old things look older than the reality . When Peter , not knowing that there was a mirror there , caught the faint traces of his own figure , he partly imagined that the former Peter Goldthwaite had come back either to assist or impede his search for the hidden wealth . And at that moment a strange notion glimmered through his brain that he was the identical Peter who had concealed the gold , and ought to know whereabout it lay . This , however , he had unaccountably forgotten . `` Well , Mr. Peter ! '' cried Tabitha , on the garret stairs . `` Have you torn the house down enough to heat the teakettle ? '' `` Not yet , old Tabby , '' answered Peter , `` but that 's soon done , as you shall see . '' With the word in his mouth , he uplifted the axe , and laid about him so vigorously that the dust flew , the boards crashed , and in a twinkling the old woman had an apron full of broken rubbish . `` We shall get our winter 's wood cheap , '' quoth Tabitha .
The good work being thus commenced , XXXXX beat down all before him , smiting and hewing at the joints and timbers , unclenching spike-nails , ripping and tearing away boards , with a tremendous racket from morning till night .
French Goldthwaite Peter Tabitha account-books bull-eyes day dimness left whereabout