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. Sometimes
they shot at him, as peasants do at aeronauts, thinking him mad and
dangerous. Thus his clothes were much shredded by bullets and his person
grievously lacerated. But he bore it all patiently.
In the beginning of his pilgrimage he used often to say, "Ah, if I could
but hear the 'Sweet By-and-by'!" But toward the end of it he used to
shed tears of anguish and say, "Ah, if I could but hear something else!"
Thus a month and three weeks drifted by, and at last some humane people
seized him and confined him in a private mad-house in New York.
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