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A long time later the incident became transiently famous when an account of it appeared in the collected verses of John Brill, the Wickford Sage. I remember two lines of the poem, not very good ones either.

They laid him away with a prayer and a tear.

The valley earth was his only bier.

Aunt Sarah always said it was a very beautiful poem, but then in her opinion the Wickford Sage took his rank with the greater Victorians. Years later there was some talk of putting a stone at the head of the grave.

"But can you imagine," Aunt Sarah said, "when they asked me where he was, I couldn't remember? The exact location had completely skipped my mind. Well, well, it probably doesn't signify."

It probably did not matter to her, but it did to me when she told me about it. I gained the distinct impression that there was a ghost in the new orchard, not a hostile ghost but a definite presence which was near me when I went to cut sticks for throwing green apples.

It is curious to reflect that most of the dogs that died on the place had their tombstones, but not Aunt Sarah's fugitive. Aunt Sarah's father was the one who started the dog cemetery near the south rock by the river. When a water spaniel, which a business acquaintance had sent him from London, died in 1822, he had a stone cut with an appropriate Greek quotation:—