The latter half of "The Devil and Tom Walker" describes the remainder of Tom's life after he makes a deal with Old Scratch, the terms of which are implied to be his soul in exchange for a great deal of money. Tom was already a thoroughly unlikable and morally corrupt person, and this continues and worsens with his newfound wealth.
As Tom ages, the certainty that his soul is damned becomes more and more of a concern to him. He begins looking for ways to cheat the terms of his deal, such as by going to church. He takes a particularly strange precaution with his horse; he has the horse shod (given new horseshoes) and then buried upside-down, because Tom believes that the world will be turned upside-down on the "last day" (i.e. the Apocalypse) and thus the horse will be right-side up, and Tom will be able to ride him to escape the Devil.
However, the text cautions that this, like many other supposed details of the story, are more likely to have been concocted and added to it by the people who tell the story, or at least, those who have no direct experience with the events. The narration implies that it is focused only upon the true "core" of the story, and that this extra effort by Tom, if truly done, was useless anyway.
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