ISITS NEW YORK, AND BECOMES THE PROPRIETOR OF
"PALGRAVE'S FOLLY."

The shadow of a mystery hung over Sevenoaks for many months. Handbills
advertising the fugitives were posted in all directions throughout the
country, but nothing came of them but rumors. The newspapers, far and
near, told the story, but it resulted in nothing save such an airing of
the Sevenoaks poor-house, and the county establishment connected with
the same, that Tom Buffum, who had lived for several years on the
border-land of apoplexy, passed suddenly over, and went so far that he
never returned to meet the official inquiry into his administration. The
Augean stables were cleansed by the Hercules of public opinion; and with
the satisfied conscience and restored self-complacency procured by this
act, the people at last settled down upon the conviction that Benedict
and his boy had shared the fate of old Tilden--that they had lost
themselves in the distant forest, and met their death alike beyond help
and discovery.

Mr. Belcher found himself without influence in the adjustment of the new
administration. Sevenoaks turned the cold shoulder to him. Nobody went
to him with the reports that connected him with the flight and fate of
the crazed inventor, yet he knew, through instincts which men of his
nature often possess in a remarkable degree, that he was deeply blamed
for the causes of Benedict's misfortunes. It has already been hinted
that at first he was suspected of knowing guiltily more about the
disappearance of the fugitives than he would be willing to tell, but
there were only a few minds in which the suspicion was long permitted to
linger. When the first excitement passed away and men began to think,
it was impossible for them to imagine motives sufficiently powerful to
induce the rich proprietor to pursue a lunatic pauper to his death.

Mr. Belcher never had encouraged the neighborly approaches which, in an
emergency like this, might have given him comfort and companionship.
Recognizing no equals in Sevenoaks--measuring his own social position by
the depth of his purse and the reach of his power--he had been in the
habit of dispensing his society as largess to the humble villagers. To
recognize a man upon the street, and speak to him in a familiar way, was
to him like the opening of his purse and throwing the surprise of a
dollar into a beggar's hat. His courtesies were charities; his
politeness was a boon; he tossed his jokes into a crowd o