[Sevenoaks by J. G. Holland]@TWC D-Link book
Sevenoaks

CHAPTER VI
7/13

When the meeting was dismissed, a hundred heads came together in chattering surmise, and when they walked into the streets, the report of Benedict's escape with his little boy met them.

They understood, too, why Buffum had come to Mr.Belcher 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.


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