Page:Saunders - Beautiful Joe, 1893.djvu/238

Rh amazement, discovered near by the skeleton of a man. There was a heavy walking-stick by his side, which they recognized as one that the Englishman had carried.

He was a drinking man, and perhaps he had taken something that he thought would strengthen him for his morning's walk, but which had, on the contrary, bewildered him, and made him lose his way and fall into the quarry. Or he might have started before daybreak, and in the darkness have slipped and fallen down this steep wall of rock. One leg was doubled under him, and if he had not been instantly killed by the fall, he must have been so disabled that he could not move. In that lonely place, he would call for help in vain, so he may have perished by the terrible death of starvation—the death he had thought to mete out to his suffering animals.

Mrs. Wood said that there was never a sermon preached in Riverdale, that had the effect that the death of this wicked man had, and it reminded her of a verse in the Bible: "He made a pit and he digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made." Mrs. Wood said that her husband had written about the finding of Mr. Barron's body to his English relatives, and had received a letter from them in which they seemed relieved to hear that he was dead. They thanked Mr. Wood for his plain speaking in telling them of their relative's misdeeds, and said that from all they knew of Mr. Barron's past conduct, his influence would be for evil and not for good, in any place that he chose to live in. They were having their money sent from Boston to Mr. Wood, and they wished him to expend it in the way he thought best fitted to counteract the evil effects of their namesake's doings in Riverdale.

When this money came, it amounted to some hundreds