fter watching him
awhile, stepped into the grave, now nearly filled, and helped to tread in
the earth.

The sexton apparently thought his conduct a little singular, but he made
no observation, and when the grave was full, Barnet suddenly stopped,
looked far away, and with a decided step proceeded to the gate and
vanished. The sexton rested on his shovel and looked after him for a few
moments, and then began banking up the mound.

In those short minutes of treading in the dead man Barnet had formed a
design, but what it was the inhabitants of that town did not for some
long time imagine. He went home, wrote several letters of business,
called on his lawyer, an old man of the same place who had been the legal
adviser of Barnet's father before him, and during the evening overhauled
a large quantity of letters and other documents in his possession. By
eleven o'clock the heap of papers in and before Barnet's grate had
reached formidable dimensions, and he began to burn them. This, owing to
their quantity, it was not so easy to do as he had expected, and he sat
long into the night to complete the task.

The next morning Barnet departed for London, leaving a note for Downe to
inform him of Mrs. Barnet's sudden death, and that he was gone to bury
her; but when a thrice-sufficient time for that purpose had elapsed, he
was not seen again in his accustomed walks, or in his new house, or in
his old one. He was gone for good, nobody knew whither. It was soon
discovered that he had empowered his lawyer to dispose of all his
property, real and personal, in the borough, and pay in the proceeds to
the account of an unknown person at one of the large London banks. The
person was by some supposed to be himself under an assumed name; but few,
if any, had certain knowledge of that fact.

The elegant new residence was sold with the rest of his possessions; and
its purchaser was no other than Downe, now a thriving man in the borough,
and one whose growing family and new wife required more roomy
accommodation than was afforded by the little house up the narrow side
street. Barnet's old habitation was bought by the trustees of the
Congregational Baptist body in that town, who pulled down the
time-honoured dwelling and built a new chapel on its site. By the time
the last hour of that, to Barnet, eventful year had chimed, every vestige
of him had disappeared from the precincts of his native place, and the
name became extinct in the b