visiting friends in Salem. After a few details of domestic news, it went
on:

"Doctor Haywood is missing: no one knows where he is gone. He has been
looked for in Boston, but they have found no news of him; only that a
little black boy says he saw a man like him go on board a ship bound for
the East Indies. Now he is gone, they find he owes money to a great many
besides your father. He owes to people in Boston for drugs and
medicines--some, it is said, very costly, and sent for express to the
old country. Mr. Sewell, the bookseller there, says he tried to dispose
of his books to him; and when he did not buy them, thinks he sent them
to the old country. He owes every one he could get to trust him. It is
odd what he did with all the money. It is thought Jonathan Phelps will
get the house. They went up to it and found the door unlocked. They
found nothing in the house but the furniture, and that very common and
cheap. There were none of all those things they said he had; only in the
south room a lot of bottles and jars, and a brick place built up with a
vent outside, which Parson H---- says is a furnace such as folks use
that study chemistry. There was a great heap of ashes in the fireplace,
as if he had burned papers or books there, and a great burned spot on
the floor right before it."

"Who was the writer of these?" I asked as I refolded the little old
letter, "and what became of Doctor Haywood? Was nothing more heard?"

In answer to these questions my friend gave the following narration.

The writer of the journal was my great uncle, Silas T----. Sophonisba and
Faithful were my mother's cousins. Both were much older than she, but I
have often seen Faithful when I was a girl, and I had all the story there