sed it. He has simply
disappeared. He left a card here, and quietly changed his lodgings. At
the Tremont House, they either don't know where he has gone or refuse
to say. I am worried about him. Poor boy! poor boy! he won love
everywhere, but he didn't want it. Only hers; and Captain Morton could
have conjured her into a black cat any time these three years, if he
had chosen. Don't blame me. There's a fate in things; and if you wanted
your boy to escape tragedy, you shouldn't have given him that face.

[Sidenote: _Ernest Hume to Francis Hume_]

Dear boy,--Could you come down and see me a bit? I'm having a series of
colds, and they keep me in bed and make me melancholy-stupid. Then,
when you go back, perhaps I can go with you. Where are you now? From
your giving the address of a post-office box, I fancy you have left the
Tremont House. When will you come?

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Ernest Hume_]

Dear father,--I will come soon. I can't quite yet. I am sorry you are
not well. I will come soon.

[Sidenote: _To the Unknown Friend_]

The voices of people about me do hurt me so. I won't see a soul I know,
but the waiters asking for orders--O they hurt me so! I shall be like a
woman, and scream. I can't see my father yet--not yet. I couldn't bear
his face, or his voice. They would be so kind. I must be alone. Yet it
is awful for crazy people to be alone. They are so beset by dreams--and
faces. I don't think they are real, but still there are faces.

... My God! what have I seen to-day! I went walking--fast, fast--and I
took the poorest streets, so that I might not meet any one I know. And
all the animal-people--hog, rabbit, fox, cat, and the rest--kept coming
toward me as I walked; for now there seems to be a sort of mist in the
air, and one face flares out of the mist and then another. And it
rushed over me suddenly how they must ache and suffer and languish to
be so poor and so ignorant and vile. There is a dropping inside my
heart, all the time, as if the blood that ought to nourish me were
falling and falling and wasting itself in pain. And I began to look
into the faces, and it seemed to me as if these people, too, were all
of them bleeding. The ground was red and soaked. And then I learned
that all this great world is in pain just like my own. I did not seem
so much alone then--not quite. They were like me, all of them. I began
to see how some might love them; and the more hideous they were, so
much the more co