Of course, if the note was found in his pocket, all would be known.

But perhaps it would not be known.

In that case, the thousand dollars and thirty dollars interest might be retained without anyone being the wiser.
It is only fair to say that Squire Davenport's face flushed with shame as the unworthy thought came to him, but still he did not banish it.
He thought the matter over, and the more he thought the more unwilling he was to give up this sum, which all at once had become dearer to him than all the rest of his possessions.
"I'll wait to see whether the note is found," he said to himself.

"Of course, if it is, I will pay it--" That is, he would pay it if he were obliged to do it.
Poor Barclay was buried in Chicago--it would have been too expensive to bring on the body--and pretty soon it transpired that he had left no property, except the modest cottage in which his widow and son continued to live.
Poor Mrs.Barclay! Everybody pitied her, and lamented her straitened circumstances.

Squire Davenport kept silence, and thought, with guilty joy, "They haven't found the note; I can keep the money, and no one will be the wiser!" How a rich man could have been guilty of such consummate meaness I will not undertake to explain, but "the love of money is the root of evil," and Squire Davenport had love of money in no common measure.
Five years passed.