h the
low, white forehead, the villagers felt that Henry's search had not
been in vain, or his revenge incomplete.

To this day no one can tell, whether, suffering the pangs of remorse,
the miserable man had put an end to his own life, or whether the
wound in the low, white forehead was planted there by the man whom he
had so dreadfully wronged.

No inquiries were made, however, and as time passed on, the history
of Nat Toner passed out of the conversations of the simple
village-folk, and, save as it was occasionally recalled by some
romantic and unfortunate event abroad, was never mentioned.

To Henry Schulte the record of that sad night was always present, and
was never effaced from his memory. The change that was wrought in him
was apparent to all. He no longer mingled with the villagers in their
merry-makings, but isolated himself entirely from their meetings and
their pleasures.

A few years afterwards his parents died, and his elder brother
assuming the control of the farm and estates of his father, Henry
removed to the farm where we now find him, and to the lowly cottage
which he had occupied to the time of which we write. He became a
settled misanthropist, whose only aim in life seemed to be the
acquirement of wealth, and whose once genial and generous nature had
now become warped into the selfishness and avarice of the miser.

So he had lived, a social hermit, until in 1845 he had become a
prematurely old man, with whitened hair and furrowed brow, whose love
for gold had become the passion of his life, and whose only
companions were a hired man and the old violin with which, in his
younger days, he was wont to make merry music at the festivals in the
village, but which now was tuned to mournful harmonies "cadenced by
his grief."

CHAPTER XIII.

_Henry Schulte becomes the Owner of "Alten Hagen."_-_Surprising
Increase in Wealth._--_An Imagined Attack upon His Life._--_The Miser
Determines to Sail for America._

It was at this time that the projected railroad between Dortmund and
Dusseldorf began to assume definite proportions, and as the line of
the contemplated road lay through the village of Hagen, much
excitement was engendered in consequence.

The people of Dortmund were building extravagant castles in the air,
and wild and vague were the dreams which filled their sanguine minds
as they contemplated the advantages that were to accrue to them upon
the completion of this enterprise.

The