“About eight weeks,” said Mr. Harry.

“That’s strange,” said Mr. Wood.  “The money these English people sent him would get to Boston just a few days after he left here.  He is not the man to leave it long unclaimed.  Something must have happened to him.  Where do you suppose he would go from Penhollow?”

“I have no idea, sir,” said Mr. Harry.

“And how would he go?” said Mr. Wood.  “He did not leave Riverdale Station, because he would have been spotted by some of his creditors.”

“Perhaps he would cut through the woods to the Junction,” said Mr. Harry.

“Just what he would do,” said Mr. Wood, slapping his knee.  “I’ll be driving over there to-morrow to see Thompson, and I’ll make inquiries.”

Mr. Harry spoke to his father the next night when he came home, and asked him if he had found out anything.  “Only this,” said Mr. Wood.  “There’s no one answering to Barron’s description who has left Riverdale Junction within a twelvemonth.  He must have struck some other station.  We’ll let him go.  The Lord looks out for fellows like that.”

“We will look out for him if he ever comes back to Riverdale,” said Mr. Harry, quietly.  All through the village, and in the country it was known what a dastardly trick the Englishman had played, and he would have been roughly handled if he had dared return.

Months passed away, and nothing was heard of him.  Late in the autumn, after Miss Laura and I had gone back to Fairport, Mrs. Wood wrote her about the end of the Englishman.  Some Riverdale lads were beating about the woods, looking for lost cattle, and in their wanderings came to an old stone quarry that had been disused for years.  On one side there was a smooth wall of rock, many feet deep.  On the other the ground and rock were broken away, and it was quite easy to get into it.  They found that by some means or other, one of their cows had fallen into this deep pit, over the steep side of the quarry.  Of course, the poor creature was dead, but the boys, out of curiosity, resolved to go down and look at her.  They clambered down, found the cow, and, to their horror and amazement, discovered near-by the skeleton of a man.  There was a heavy walking-stick by his side, which they recognized as one that the Englishman had carried.

He was a drinking man, and perhaps he had taken something that he thought would strengthen him for his morning’s walk, but which had, on the contrary, bewildered him, and made him lose his way and fall into the quarry.  Or he might have started before daybreak, and in the darkness have slipped and fallen down this steep wall of rock.  One leg was doubled under him, and if he had not been instantly killed by the fall, he must have been so disabled that he could not move.  In that lonely place, he would call for help in vain, so he may have perished by the terrible death of starvation—­the death he had thought to mete out to his suffering animals.