THE OLD MAN’S SECRET. 
BY W. D. BOYNTON. 
Nearly every day during the winter, I 
had met, on my way to the post-office, an 
old man going his daily rounds with a little 
battered and worn hand-sled, upon which 
was strapped a shoe-box large enough to 
hold two swill-pails, in which he gathered 
slops and garbage, or, perhaps, in lieu of 
these, would be seen in his box a pitiful 
collection of chips, sticks, bark, and bits of 
coal, picked up along the wood-yards and 
beside the railway switches. 
“Not an uncommon sight in a city,” you 
say. 
Perhaps not in a large crowded city. But 
in this young, thriving western town, 
where labor is plenty, and beggars almost 
unknown, it was an uncommon sight. Many 
times, as I watched him shuffling along in 
a painfully careful way, his dull eyes fixed 
always on the ground at his feet—never 
looking to the right or to the left—I felt 
idly curious to know something of his 
former life. Passing directly in front of 
him I sometimes caught a partial view of 
his features, or at least, such as were visible 
through the tangled mass of beard and hair, 
to which the razor and other tonsorial im¬ 
plements had long been strangers. They 
were not the features of a weak, groveling, 
old man, however low, base and repulsive 
their present setting might be. They were 
finely, regular and strong, with nothing of 
coarseness in their appearance, beyond that 
which resulted from gross unkemptness. 
But the old man would never look up 
when we met, that I might catch his eye 
and speak to him, but always plodded hope¬ 
lessly, drearily along on his solitary, un¬ 
inviting way. 
I enquired of others; but no one seemed 
to know his name or aught of his history, 
save that for years he had lived in the little 
hovel on the brink of the ravine, with no 
other living companion but his cow, whose 
food he gathered from day to day in the 
way that I have described. 
One morning in early Spring, just after a 
heavy night’s rain, when every gulch and 
water-course was filled with a seething, 
roaring torrent, rumbling and thundering 
down from the hills above, I walked dowm 
by the ravine to an open place, through 
which I had often caught a glimpse of the 
old man’s hut. But the little old hovel was 
gone ! 
A small crowd ot men and boys stood 
about the spot, talking together in little 
knots, or idly poking over the rubbish that 
had not been washed away. 
I made my way to the brink of the ra¬ 
vine, where I soon comprehended the na¬ 
ture of the disaster. 
The terrible force of the torrent had par¬ 
tially undermined the little point upon 
which the hut had stood, and the frail 
structure with its uncouth, mysterious oc¬ 
cupant, had toppled over into the black wa¬ 
ters beneath. 
A small party of men was just moving 
away to search along down the ravine for 
the last earthly remains of the old maD. 
There could be but one result to such a dis¬ 
aster: even a strong, skillful swimmer 
must have perished in that raging flood, 
and amid the black darkness of that wild 
stormy night. 
Feelings of curiosity and humanity 
prompted me to join the party in th* 
search. Slowly and carefully we ex¬ 
amined every nook and projecting crag 
along the tortuous course, where a body 
might have been hidden away or flung up 
on the rocks. For long hours the search 
proceeded, and we were led far out of the 
limits of the town, into a rough, rocky glen, 
where the stream sped along less swiftly, 
owing to its greater freedom from confirm¬ 
ing walls. 
Here, with his last vice-like grip on a 
piece of the cabin’s wreck, that had wedged 
between the rocks, we found the old man’s 
body. 
Alone he had lived, and alone he had 
died. 
Those who had passed by the old man, 
unheedingly, for years, dropped heart-felt 
tears over that poor, worn, old frame, as 
they lifted it tenderly from its watery an¬ 
chorage and placed it on the warm, sandy 
bank, above. 
The bright spring sunshine poured over 
the tattered garb, and something among the 
ragged folds over the old man’s breast re- 
