Of course he might have had a fall while tramping about and injured himself seriously or even fatally; but neither was that likely.
For several days, therefore, his family and his neighbors waited for him to return of his own accord.

But when a week or more passed and he did not come anxiety deepened; and his son and the neighbors bestirred themselves to make wider inquiries.

Tardily, at last, a considerable party searched the woods and the lake shores; and finally as many as fifty persons turned out and spent a day and a night looking for him.
"They will not find him," the old Squire remarked with a kind of sad certainty; and he did not join the searchers himself or encourage us boys to do so.

I think that both he and grandmother Ruth partly feared that, as the old lady quaintly expressed it, "Jonathan had been left to take his own life," in a fit of despondency.
The disappearance was so mysterious, indeed, and some people thought so suspicious, that the town authorities took it up.

The selectmen came to the Edwards farm and made careful inquiries into all the circumstances in order to make sure there had been nothing like wrongdoing.