e did not at once go about his search, but said
to himself:

"Let me not risk the killing of my last hope till I have warmed myself
with it one more night, for to-morrow there may be no more warmth in
it."

He went to a hotel, ordered a room and a bottle of wine, and sat over
it all night, indulging the belief that he would find her the next
day. He denied his imagination nothing, but conjured up before his
mind's eye the lovely vision of her fairest hour, complete even to the
turn of the neck, the ribbon in the hair, and the light in the blue
eyes. So he would turn into the street. Yes, here was the number. Then
he rings the bell. She comes to the door. She regards him a moment
indifferently. Then amazed recognition, love, happiness, transfigure
her face. "Ida!" "Karl!" and he clasps her sobbing to his bosom, from
which she shall never be sundered again.

The result of his search next day was the discovery that mother and
daughter had been at Duesseldorf until about four years previous, where
the mother had died of consumption, and the daughter had removed,
leaving no address. The lodgings occupied by them were of a wretched
character, showing that their circumstances must have been very much
reduced.

There was now no further clew to guide his search. It was destined
that the last he was to know of her should be that she was thrown on
the tender mercies of the world--her last friend gone, her last penny
expended. She was buried out of his sight, not in the peaceful grave,
with its tender associations, but buried alive in the living world;
hopelessly hid in the huge, writhing confusion of humanity. He
lingered in the folly of despair about those sordid lodgings in
Duesseldorf as one might circle vainly about the spot in the ocean
where some pearl of great price had fallen overboard.

After a while he roused again, and began putting advertisements for
Ida in the principal newspapers of Germany, and making random visits
to towns all about to consult directories and police records. A
singular sort of misanthropy possessed him. He cursed the multitude of
towns and villages that reduced the chances in his favor to so small a
thing. He cursed the teeming throngs of men, women, and children, in
whose mass she was lost, as a jewel in a mountain of rubbish. Had he
possessed the power, he would in those days, without an instant's
hesitation, have swept the bewildering, obstructing millions of
Germany out of existence, as