On the fifth day he returned home as quietly as he had gone.
Perhaps a month after he came back, while driving to one of his singing schools on a bitter night in February, he took a severe cold.

For lack of any proper care at his little lonesome, chilly house, his cold a day or two later turned into pneumonia, and from that he died.
The savings bank took the house and the musical instruments.

The piano, the organ, the old violin and other things were sold at auction.

And probably Helen Thomas, whose brilliant career he had made possible, never heard anything about the circumstances of his death..