Tom grows anxious as his wife fails to return from her visit with Old Scratch, though, as Irving reveals with great irony, the real object of Tom’s concern is the household silver that she took with her.
Tom waited and waited for her, but in vain; midnight came, but she did not make her appearance; morning, noon, night returned, but still she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her safety, especially as he found she had carried off in her apron the silver tea-pot and spoons, and every portable article of value.
In some of the most comedic sections of the story, Irving plays with the reader’s expectation that a husband would care for the wellbeing of his wife, revealing just how twisted Tom’s actual priorities are. When Tom goes to look for his wife in the swamp, he is excited to find her apron, but only because he assumes the silver might be bundled into it. He is merely disappointed, rather than horrified, to find “a heart and liver tied up in it.”
Rather than being outraged with Black Scratch over the loss of his wife, Tom recovers quickly, and even comes to think of her disappearance, ironically, as a favor. The "favor" is described using heavy verbal irony: “Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property, with the loss of his wife, for he was a man of fortitude,” Irving writes, and ultimately “He even felt something like gratitude toward the black woodsman, who, he considered, had done him a kindness.” With dark humor, Irving underscores how morally degraded Tom is—his "fortitude" is actually callousness, and his idea of a "kindness" is actually cruelty.
