In the midst of the summer we decided to go to Chicago.  Douglas’ clothes, his boots, his hat, were worn almost to pieces.  We were driving a single horse hitched to a buggy.  The horse was weary; the harness was a patch of ropes.  We could have made these things good with purchases along the way, but Douglas put off the day.  At last we decided to make them in Chicago.  He was loath to let me use my money for such needs as these, seeing that I had already contributed so much to campaign expenses.  But I overbore his wishes.

We were a comical pair driving into the hurly burly of the new city of Chicago.  It had recently received a charter.  But what a motley of buildings it was!  Frame shacks wedged between more substantial buildings of brick or wood.  Land speculators swarmed everywhere; land offices confronted one at every turn; lawyers, doctors, men of all professions and trades had descended upon this waste of sand and scrub oaks about the lake.  Indians walked among the whites; negroes as porters, laborers, bootblacks, were plentiful; there were countless drinking places and new hotels; there were sharpers, adventurers, blacklegs, men of prey of all description, prostitutes, the camp followers of new settlements, houses of vice, restaurants, gardens.  And with all the rest of it evidences of fine breeds, and civilizing purposes in some of the residences and activities.  After all a city was to be built.

And here we were—­a sorry pair indeed!  Douglas, worn from his campaigning, battered and frayed; myself, dusty and unkempt, entering Chicago behind a horse dragging its body harnessed in patches to a rattling buggy.  We laughed at ourselves.

Douglas and I went to a clothing store where I insisted upon fitting him out with a suit and a hat.  We bought a new harness for the horse.  Then we set forth for meals and drinks.

Somehow I felt that Zoe might be in some concert hall singing for the means of life.  A darker idea crossed my mind, but I put it away.  I told Douglas that I meant to find Zoe, if I could.  After our meal we went from place to place in this quest.  Douglas did not try to dissuade me, but he looked at me keenly as if he wondered why I wished to find Zoe.  Why, after all?  As years elapsed I would be rid of all associated memory of her in Jacksonville.  Might not Dorothy come back to me if she knew that Zoe had wholly vanished from my life?  Yet something of a sense of responsibility, and something of an affection for Zoe kept my mind fast to the idea of finding her.  Up and down the streets of Chicago Douglas and I walked, looking for Zoe.

Once I heard a woman’s voice singing “Annie Laurie.”  I rushed into the place whence the voice came, followed deliberately and patiently by Douglas.  There stood a woman on a sort of platform.  She was garishly dressed.  There were idlers and drinkers at the table.  When we came out Douglas said that the search was useless; that if Zoe was in Chicago she might be in a place so secret that I would never find her, except by chance.  Yes, I understood.  And if it had come to that, what could I do with Zoe, if I found her?