none of them could recall ever having seen the original, and one night
the detective sat in his room at a little tavern where he was lodging,
and he felt quite depressed. He had made such a good start, he had
calculated to go right ahead and secure all the facts, and here he had
spent five days, working away into the night--indeed, he had devoted
eighteen hours out of the twenty-four--and had been completely baffled.
It was still comparatively early in the evening when he went down into
the barroom, and he was sitting there watching a game of high, low, jack
being played by some old fishermen. It was a pretty rough sort of night.
The wind howled without and made the shutters and casements of the old
building rattle, and finally an old man who was sitting there remarked:

"It's a pretty rough sort of night; I hope all the boys who were on the
water got in safe before this southeaster came sweeping over the
waters."

"Oh, yes, I reckon all the fishermen got in all right."

The place where our hero was located at the time was a little fishing
village on the coast, and another man remarked:

"It ain't often the boys are caught in a gale like this; they know
what's coming pretty well."

"Yes, yes, as a rule, but sometimes a mishap will overtake a man when
there is neither wind nor high seas. I often cogitate over what accident
must have befallen Jacob Canfield. He left the shore one morning when it
was as mild and fair as the brightest June day that ever dawned, and it
was pleasant and calm all day. The sun went down as serenely as it rose,
and not a ripple was on the sea--yes, it was a mild, lovely October day,
from sunrise to sunset. Jake was seen to go out in his boat, but neither
Jake nor the boat was ever seen afterward. I tell you I've never made up
my mind as to what happened him."

"I've heard about that," said one of the men; "it happened a long time
ago."

"Yes, it happened forty years ago. I don't just remember the date when
he disappeared, but it was somewhere in the middle of October, and as I
said, as fair and mild a day as though it were the middle of June, but
Jake was never seen alive afterward."

Jack was all ears and attention. Here were two suggestive incidents: a
man named Jake Canfield had disappeared forty years previously on a
beautiful October day and had never been seen since, and it was in
October when an unknown man from Monmouth County was killed on the
railroad. Jack made no demonstra