Unfortunately for Joseph the disease which had cut off his parents did not stop at that; it went on and extirpated nearly the whole Brownon contingent and its allies by marriage; and those who fled did not return.  The tradition was broken, the Brownon estates passed into alien hands and the only Brownons remaining in that place were underground in Oak Hill Cemetery, where, indeed, was a colony of them powerful enough to resist the encroachment of surrounding tribes and hold the best part of the grounds.  But about the ghost: 

One night, about three years after the death of Hetty Parlow, a number of the young people of Blackburg were passing Oak Hill Cemetery in a wagon—­if you have been there you will remember that the road to Greenton runs alongside it on the south.  They had been attending a May Day festival at Greenton; and that serves to fix the date.  Altogether there may have been a dozen, and a jolly party they were, considering the legacy of gloom left by the town’s recent somber experiences.  As they passed the cemetery the man driving suddenly reined in his team with an exclamation of surprise.  It was sufficiently surprising, no doubt, for just ahead, and almost at the roadside, though inside the cemetery, stood the ghost of Hetty Parlow.  There could be no doubt of it, for she had been personally known to every youth and maiden in the party.  That established the thing’s identity; its character as ghost was signified by all the customary signs—­the shroud, the long, undone hair, the “far-away look”—­everything.  This disquieting apparition was stretching out its arms toward the west, as if in supplication for the evening star, which, certainly, was an alluring object, though obviously out of reach.  As they all sat silent (so the story goes) every member of that party of merrymakers—­they had merry-made on coffee and lemonade only—­distinctly heard that ghost call the name “Joey, Joey!” A moment later nothing was there.  Of course one does not have to believe all that.

Now, at that moment, as was afterward ascertained, Joey was wandering about in the sage-brush on the opposite side of the continent, near Winnemucca, in the State of Nevada.  He had been taken to that town by some good persons distantly related to his dead father, and by them adopted and tenderly cared for.  But on that evening the poor child had strayed from home and was lost in the desert.

His after history is involved in obscurity and has gaps which conjecture alone can fill.  It is known that he was found by a family of Piute Indians, who kept the little wretch with them for a time and then sold him—­actually sold him for money to a woman on one of the east-bound trains, at a station a long way from Winnemucca.  The woman professed to have made all manner of inquiries, but all in vain:  so, being childless and a widow, she adopted him herself.  At this point of his career Jo seemed to be getting a long way from the condition of orphanage; the interposition of a multitude of parents between himself and that woeful state promised him a long immunity from its disadvantages.