and returned to the place of his affections for _this_.

"Whether he grasped then and there the full meaning of this double
burial (young Kissam had shot himself upon hearing of Evelyn's death),
or whether all explanations were deferred till he and Felix walked away
together from the grave, has never transpired. From that minute till
they both left town on the following day, no one had any word with him,
save Poindexter, whom he went once to see, and young Kissam's mother,
who came once to see him. Like a phantom he had risen upon the sight of
the good people of Montgomery, and like a phantom he disappeared, never
to be seen by any of them again, unless, as many doubt, the story is
true which was told some twenty years ago by one of the little village
lads. He says (it was six years after the tragic scene I have just
related) that one evening as he was hurrying by the churchyard, in great
anxiety to reach home before it was too dark, he came upon the figure of
a man standing beside a grave, with a little child in his arms. This man
was tall, long-bearded, and terrifying. His attitude, as the lad
describes it, was one of defiance, if not of cursing. High in his right
hand he held the child, almost as if he would hurl him at the village
which lies under the hill on which the churchyard is perched; and though
the moment passed quickly, the boy, now a man, never has forgotten the
picture thus presented or admitted that it was anything but a real one.
As the description he gave of this man answered to the appearance of
Amos Cadwalader, and as the shoe of a little child was found next
morning on the grave of Cadwalader's daughter, Evelyn, it has been
thought by many that the boy really beheld this old soldier, who for
some mysterious reason had chosen nightfall for this fleeting visit to
his daughter's resting-place. But to others it was only a freak of the
lad's imagination, which had been much influenced by the reading of
romances. For, as these latter reasoned, had it really been Cadwalader,
why did he not show himself at John Poindexter's house--that old friend
who now had a little daughter and no wife and who could have made him so
comfortable? Among these was Poindexter himself, though some thought he
looked oddly while making this remark, as if he spoke more from custom
than from the heart. Indeed, since the unfortunate death of Evelyn in
his house, he had never shown the same interest in the Cadwaladers. But
then he