No one questioned him upon his journey, or its result, and he gave no explanations, but when some weeks later a party of hunters in the forests on the mountains, near Werne, discovered the lifeless body of Nat Toner, with his pistol by his side, and a bullet-hole through the low, white forehead, the villagers felt that Henry's search had not been in vain, or his revenge incomplete.
To this day no one can tell, whether, suffering the pangs of remorse, the miserable man had put an end to his own life, or whether the wound in the low, white forehead was planted there by the man whom he had so dreadfully wronged.
No inquiries were made, however, and as time passed on, the history of Nat Toner passed out of the conversations of the simple village-folk, and, save as it was occasionally recalled by some romantic and unfortunate event abroad, was never mentioned.
To Henry Schulte the record of that sad night was always present, and was never effaced from his memory. The change that was wrought in him was apparent to all. He no longer mingled with the villagers in their merry-makings, but isolated himself entirely from their meetings and their pleasures.
A few years afterwards his parents died, and his elder brother assuming the control of the farm and estates of his father, Henry removed to the farm where we now find him, and to the lowly cottage which he had occupied to the time of which we write. He became a settled misanthropist, whose only aim in life seemed to be the acquirement of wealth, and whose once genial and generous nature had now become warped into the selfishness and avarice of the miser.
So he had lived, a social hermit, until in 1845 he had become a prematurely old man, with whitened hair and furrowed brow, whose love for gold had become the passion of his life, and whose only companions were a hired man and the old violin with which, in his younger days, he was wont to make merry music at the festivals in the village, but which now was tuned to mournful harmonies "cadenced by his grief."
Henry Schulte becomes the Owner of "Alten Hagen."—Surprising Increase in Wealth.—An Imagined Attack upon His Life.—The Miser Determines to Sail for America.
It was at this time that the projected railroad between Dortmund and Dusseldorf began to assume definite proportions, and as the line of the contemplated road lay through the village of Hagen, much excitement was engendered in consequence.
The people of Dortmund were building extravagant castles in the air, and wild and vague were the dreams which filled their sanguine minds as they contemplated the advantages that were to accrue to them upon the completion of this enterprise.