ument of many, "has nothing been
heard of the matter since? If that girl had really been Miss
Ballantine, and that simple old man her father, do you think we
should have heard no more on the subject? The imposition was
immediately detected, and the whole matter quashed at once."

Failing to create any interest in the minds of those he had supposed
would have been most eager to prosecute inquiry, but led on by
desperate hope, Perkins had an advertisement inserted in all the
city papers, asking the individuals who had presented themselves
some eighteen months before as Mr. Ballantine and his daughter, to
call upon him at his rooms in the hotel. A week passed, but no one
responded to the call. He then tried to ascertain the names of the
physicians who, it was said, had attended an old man for imbecility
of mind, at the request of a daughter who seemed most deeply devoted
to him. In this he at length proved successful.

"I did attend such a case," was at last replied to his oft-repeated
question.

"Then, my dear sir," said Perkins, in a deeply excited voice, "tell
me where they are."

"That, my young friend, is, really out of my power," returned the
physician. "It is some time since I visited them."

"What was their name?" asked the young man.

"Glenn, if I recollect rightly."

"Glenn! Glenn!" said Perkins, starting, and then pausing to think.
"Was the daughter a tall, pale, slender girl, with light brown
hair?"

"She was. And though living in the greatest seclusion was a woman of
refinement and education."

"You can direct me, of course, to the house where they live?"

"I can. But you will not, I presume, find them there. The daughter,
when I last saw her, said that she had resolved on taking her father
on to Boston, in order to try the effects of the discipline of the
Massachusetts Insane Hospital upon him, of which she had seen a very
favorable report. I encouraged her to go, and my impression is that
she is already at the North."

"Glenn! Glenn!" said Perkins, half aloud, and musingly, as the
doctor ceased. "Yes! it must be, it is the same! She was often seen
visiting Charlestown, and going in the direction of the hospitals.
Yes! yes! It must be she!"

Waiting only long enough in New Orleans to satisfy himself that the
persons alluded to by the physician had actually removed from the
place where they resided some months before, and with the declared
intention of going North, Perkins started home by the