d on these institutions, the
fierce wolves of prey, and fed them with honeyed words of excuse and
praise. No, it wuz for the undoing of some other man's daughter that
he had imagined these institutions had been raised and cherished.

He wuz an old broken man when he tottered out of that room. And whilst
we wuz moving heaven and earth hunting for the girls he wuz raving
with delerium with a doctor and trained nurse over him. Poor man!
doomed to spend his hull life a wretched wanderer, searching for the
idol of his heart he wuz never to see agin--never!

Well, the time come when we wuz obleeged to leave Manila. Robert
Strong, for Dorothy's sake as well as his own, left detectives to help
on the search for the lost ones, and left word how to communicate with
him at any time. Waitstill Webb, bein' consulted with, promised to do
all in her power to help find them, but she didn't act half so shocked
and horrified as I spozed she would, not half so much as Arvilly did.
She forgot her canvassin' and wep' and cried for three or four days
most all the time, and went round huntin', actin' more'n half crazy,
her feelin's wuz such. But I spoze the reason Waitstill acted so calm
wuz that such things wuz so common in her experience. She had
knowledge of the deadly saloon and its twin licensed horror, dretful
things was occurring all the time, she said.

The detectives also seemed to regard it as nothing out of the common,
and as to the saloon-keeper, so much worse things wuz happenin' all
the time in his profession, so much worse crimes, that he and his rich
pardner, the American Govermunt, sees goin' on all the time in their
countless places of bizness, murders, suicides, etc., that they
evidently seemed to consider this a very commonplace affair; and so of
the other house kep' by the two pardners, the brazen-faced old hag and
Christian America, there, too, so many more terrible things wuz
occurrin' all the time that this wuz a very tame thing to talk about.

But to us who loved her, to us whose hearts wuz wrung thinkin' of her,
mournin' for her, cryin' on our pillers, seekin' with agonized,
hopeless eyes for our dear one, we kep' on searchin' day and night,
hopin' aginst hope till the last minute of our stay there. And the
moon and stars of the tropics looked in night after night to the room
where the old father lay at death's door, mourning for his beautiful
innocent daughter who wuz lost--lost.

But the hour come for us to go