“My address will be in Washington,” Kate said.  “I shall go at once to the Spragues.  They have been there, as I told you, to seek every possible source of information.  I left them to follow you, hoping that through you I should find the missing.”

“You made no mistake.  I shall find them.  You can tell your friends that,” and he added, with a gleam of savage malice, “God help the man that has raised the weight of a feather against them, for he has put a heavy hurt on me if he has harmed them!”

Kate shuddered.  Was she never to emerge from this hideous circle of vengeful hatred—­this condition of passionate vendetta—­where men were seeking each other’s harm?  On reaching home she addressed a note to her father explaining frankly that she had entered into communication with Jones; that who had been pained by all that she had heard; that the inquiry had now passed out of her hands and was in that of the authorities, and begging him to drop any participation he might have meditated In a late letter Olympia had given good news of her mother, saying that Kate could return with safety, and, informing her father of this, Kate bade him good-by for a time.

When Kate reached Washington she found Mrs. Sprague convalescent, but painfully feeble.  The poor mother reproached herself for the interruption of the search, and implored the two girls to begin again without a moment’s delay.  Kate gave her as much hope as she dared.  She hinted something of the outlines of what she had done and the new agent in the field.  With this Mrs. Sprague was greatly comforted, but begged then to remit no efforts of their own.  It was after three days’ fruitless searching among the records of the department and among the men of the Caribee regiment, now returned to Washington en route to the front, that Kate bethought herself of her father’s probable presence in the city.  She got out of the carriage and entered the long reception room of Willard’s to make inquiry.  The boy who came at her call said, as soon as she asked for Mr. Boone: 

“Why, I jast saw him at the desk, paying his bill.  He is probably there still.  Wait here until I see.”

But Kate, fearing that he might be gone before she could reach him, followed the boy.  There was no sign of her father at the desk, and, turning hastily out of the main corridor, filled with officers and the clank of swords almost stunning her, she reached the porch just as a cab set out toward the station.  She might a glimpse of her father’s face in it.  He was leaving the city.  She must see him.  The inspiration of the instant suggested by a cabman was followed.  She hastily entered the vehicle and bade the driver keep in sight of the one her father was in until it came to a stop.  The driver whipped up his horses, but there wasn’t much speed in them.  Kate dared not look out of the window, and sat in feverish anxiety while she was whirled along Pennsylvania Avenue, almost to the