ed the
neighborhood like a madwoman. O'Rourke had not been at the 'Finnigans'.
He had not been at The Wee Drop since Monday, and this was Wednesday
night. Her heart sunk within her when she failed to find him in the
police-station. Some dreadful thing had happened to him. She came back
to the house with one hand pressed wearily against her cheek. The dawn
struggled through the kitchen windows, and fell upon Margaret crouched
by the stove.

She could no longer wear her mask. When Mr. Bilkins came down she
confessed that Larry had taken to drinking again, and had not been home
for two nights.

"Mayhap he 's drownded hisself," suggested Margaret, wringing her hands.

"Not he," said Mr. Bilkins; "he does n't like the taste of water well
enough."

"Troth, thin, he does n't," reflected Margaret, and the reflection
comforted her.

"At any rate, I 'll go and look him up after breakfast," said Mr.
Bilkins. And after breakfast, accordingly, Mr. Bilkins sallied forth
with the depressing expectation of finding Mr. O'Rourke without much
difficulty. "Come to think of it," said the old gentleman to himself,
drawing on his white cotton gloves as he walked up Anchor Street
"_I_ don't want to find him."

III.

But Mr. O'Rourke was not to be found. With amiable cynicism Mr. Bilkins
directed his steps in the first instance to the police-station, quite
confident that a bird of Mr. O'Rourke's plumage would be brought
to perch in such a cage. But not so much as a feather of him was
discoverable. The Wee Drop was not the only bacchanalian resort in
Rivermouth; there were five or six other low drinking-shops scattered
about town, and through these Mr. Bilkins went conscientiously. He then
explored various blind alleys, known haunts of the missing man, and took
a careful survey of the wharves along the river on his way home. He even
shook the apple-tree near the stable with a vague hope of bringing
down Mr. O'Rourke, but brought down nothing except a few winter
apples, which, being both unripe and unsound, were not perhaps bad
representatives of the object of his search.

That evening a small boy stopped at the door of the Bilking mansion with
a straw hat, at once identified as Mr. O'Rourke's, which had been found
on Neal's Wharf. This would have told against another man; but O'Rourke
was always leaving his hat on a wharf. Margaret's distress is not to
be pictured. She fell back upon and clung to the idea that Larry had
drowned