r with his trouble. He was Mr. Belcher's man, and
Mr. Belcher had publicly assumed responsibility for him.

No more meetings were held in any of the churches of Sevenoaks that day.
The ministers came to perform the services of the afternoon, and,
finding their pews empty, went home. A reward of one hundred dollars,
offered by Mr. Belcher to any one who would find Benedict and his boy,
"and return them in safety to the home provided for them by the town,"
was a sufficient apology, without the motives of curiosity and humanity
and the excitement of a search in the fields and woods, for a universal
relinquishment of Sunday habits, and the pouring out of the whole
population on an expedition of discovery.

Sevenoaks and its whole vicinity presented a strange aspect that
afternoon. There had slept in the hearts of the people a pleasant and
sympathetic memory of Mr. Benedict. They had seen him struggling,
dreaming, hopeful, yet always disappointed, dropping lower and lower
into poverty, and, at last, under accumulated trials, deprived of his
reason. They knew but little of his relations to Mr. Belcher, but they
had a strong suspicion that he had been badly treated by the
proprietor, and that it had been in the power of the latter to save him
from wreck. So, when it became known that he had escaped with his boy
from the poor-house, and that both had been exposed to the storm of the
previous night, they all--men and boys--covered the fields, and filled
the woods for miles around, in a search so minute that hardly a rod of
cover was left unexplored.

It was a strange excitement which stirred the women at home, as well as
the men afield. Nothing was thought of but the fugitives and the
pursuit.

Robert Belcher, in the character of principal citizen, was riding back
and forth behind his gray trotters, and stimulating the search in every
quarter. Poor Miss Butterworth sat at her window, making indiscriminate
inquiries of every passenger, or going about from house to house,
working off her nervous anxiety in meaningless activities.

As the various squads became tired by their long and unsuccessful
search, they went to the poor-house to report, and, before sunset, the
hill was covered by hundreds of weary and excited men. Some were sure
they had discovered traces of the fugitives. Others expressed the
conviction that they had thrown themselves into a well. One man, who did
not love Mr. Belcher, and had heard the stories of his i