d cry of
"Rosannah!"

But, alas, it was Aunt Susan's voice that spake. She said:

"I have been out all day; just got in. I will go and find her."

The watchers waited two minutes--five minutes--ten minutes. Then came
these fatal words, in a frightened tone:

"She is gone, and her baggage with her. To visit another friend, she
told the servants. But I found this note on the table in her room.
Listen: 'I am gone; seek not to trace me out; my heart is broken; you
will never see me more. Tell him I shall always think of him when I sing
my poor "Sweet By-and-by," but never of the unkind words he said about
it.' That is her note. Alonzo, Alonzo, what does it mean? What has
happened?"

But Alonzo sat white and cold as the dead. His mother threw back
the velvet curtains and opened a window. The cold air refreshed the
sufferer, and he told his aunt his dismal story. Meantime his mother
was inspecting a card which had disclosed itself upon the floor when
she cast the curtains back. It read, "Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, San
Francisco."

"The miscreant!" shouted Alonzo, and rushed forth to seek the false
Reverend and destroy him; for the card explained everything, since in
the course of the lovers' mutual confessions they had told each other
all about all the sweethearts they had ever had, and thrown no end of
mud at their failings and foibles for lovers always do that. It has a
fascination that ranks next after billing and cooing.

IV

During the next two months many things happened. It had early transpired
that Rosannah, poor suffering orphan, had neither returned to her
grandmother in Portland, Oregon, nor sent any word to her save a
duplicate of the woeful note she had left in the mansion on Telegraph
Hill. Whosoever was sheltering her--if she was still alive--had been
persuaded not to betray her whereabouts, without doubt; for all efforts
to find trace of her had failed.

Did Alonzo give her up? Not he. He said to himself, "She will sing
that sweet song when she is sad; I shall find her." So he took his
carpet-sack and a portable telephone, and shook the snow of his native
city from his arctics, and went forth into the world. He wandered far
and wide and in many states. Time and again, strangers were astounded to
see a wasted, pale, and woe-worn man laboriously climb a telegraph-pole
in wintry and lonely places, perch sadly there an hour, with his ear at
a little box, then come sighing down, and wander wearily away