The first person he asked told him that the doctor had been for some weeks dead and buried.
The young earl was terribly shocked.

Dead and buried--the kindly man who had befriended him in the hour of need! It seemed almost incredible.

And why had no one written to him?
Still he remembered the address of his child's foster-mother.

It was Ashwood Cottage; and he went thither at once.

When he found that too closed and deserted, it seemed to him that fortune was playing him a trick.
He was disconcerted; and then, believing that this at least was but a case of removal, he decided upon going to the rector of the parish, whom he well remembered.