The Devil and Tom Walker

• Kidd the pirate buried treasure near a swamp. The devil watches over the treasure, but Kidd never returned to claim the treasure because he was caught in Boston and sent to England to be hanged for being a pirate.
• Tom Walker lives in England with his wife, they are "miserly" and are always "cheating each other." They don't agree on anything; they hate each other.
• Tom's wife beats him.
• On the way home one day, Tom takes a shortcut through the swamp. He reaches the fort where the treasure is buried and sits down for a moment's peace. As he is sitting, he pokes around at the "mold" or dirty rotten vegetables, and his staff hits something hard. It is an old Indian skull complete with tomahawk. He's looking at it when he hears a stranger's voice tell him to leave it alone. The stranger is a dark figure, a black figure, but neither Indian nor Negro.
• The devil has black hair, dingy and sooty face, an ax over his shoulder; red eyes.
• The trees in the forest are marked with the names of men in the colony. Deacon Peabody's tree is axed almost all the way through and about to fall over.
• Deacon Peabody isn't dead yet, but he will be soon , if the devil wills it.
• Tom thinks about the conditions (those that are not "spoken aloud") of the devil so that he may be able to have the hidden treasure. The devil puts a "print of a finger burnt" onto Tom's forehead that won't go away.
• Absalom Crowninshield dies; his tree in the swamp has been hacked down by the devil.
• Tom tells his wife about his encounter with the devil and about the treasure. His wife urges him to agree to the devil's conditions and "sell his soul" to the devil.
• Tom refuses to do this simply because he wants to disagree with his wife. He doesn't want to be damned on her account or to merely please her.
• Tom's wife decides to go to the devil herself and agree to the conditions on her own behalf, and if this works, keep all the treasure to herself. She meets the devil, has to go back with a "propitiatory" offering. (everything she owned that had value, silver, etc.) But she never returns home for days and no one hears from her again or knows what happened to her although there are many different stories about her how her disappearance comes to be.
• It was said that when Tom went to look for his wife, he found her apron in a tree next to a vulture. He climbed up to get it, and the vulture flew away screeching. Inside the apron, Tom found a heart and liver and not his valuables as he was expecting.
• Tom thought that perhaps the devil had fought with his wife who always put up a good fight. He was almost grateful the devil had probably killed his wife.
• Tom meets the devil again and decides that he will promise to anything if it will gain him the treasure.
• Tom is to become a broker in Boston with his treasure money and drive merchants to bankruptcy with high rate of interest (becomes an usurer)
  
• Tom walker becomes a broker/usurer in a time of hardship which is a more advantageous time for him to do well in his job and making money off of others. The people in Boston had had many a time on and off false senses of security and prosperity.
• Tom became very wealthy at his position as an usurer; he built a big house to impress others, but filled it with nothing, no furnishings. He is still very uptight with his money.
• Tom fears, though, his afterlife and his deal with the devil. So, to try and avoid this, he becomes an avid church-goer and after some time begins to go a little mad.
• One stormy day, Tom makes the mistake of getting irritated at a customer whom he had driven to bankruptcy. He says to the customer, "The devil take me if I have made a farthing!" (This is sarcasm implying that the devil can take him because he's done well for himself, why doesn't the devil just take him for actually making a decent living for himself)
• The devil appears with a black horse and Tom is taken away by the horse back to the swamp and Indian fort. Some say they saw the swamp burst into flame as Tom rode into it on the black horse. It is also said that all of Tom's possessions burned and became nothing but ash.