“You can direct me, of course, to the house where they live?”

“I can.  But you will not, I presume, find them there.  The daughter, when I last saw her, said that she had resolved on taking her father on to Boston, in order to try the effects of the discipline of the Massachusetts Insane Hospital upon him, of which she had seen a very favorable report.  I encouraged her to go, and my impression is that she is already at the North.”

“Glenn!  Glenn!” said Perkins, half aloud, and musingly, as the doctor ceased.  “Yes! it must be, it is the same!  She was often seen visiting Charlestown, and going in the direction of the hospitals.  Yes! yes!  It must be she!”

Waiting only long enough in New Orleans to satisfy himself that the persons alluded to by the physician had actually removed from the place where they resided some months before, and with the declared intention of going North, Perkins started home by the quickest route from New Orleans to the North.  It was about the middle of February when he arrived in Boston.  Among the first he met was Milford, to whom he had written from New Orleans a full account of the reason of his visiting that place so suddenly, and of his failure to discover the persons of whom he was in search.

“My dear friend, I am glad to see you back!” said Milford, earnestly, as he grasped the hand of Perkins.  “I wrote you a week ago, but, of course, that letter has not been received, and you are doubtless in ignorance of what has come to my knowledge within the last few days.”

“Tell me, quickly, what you mean!” said Perkins, grasping the arm of his friend.

“Be calm, and I will tell you,” replied Milford.  “About a week ago I learned, by almost an accident, from the transfer clerk in the bank, that the young woman whom we knew as Lizzy Glenn had, early in the fall, come to the bank with certificates of stock, and had them transferred to the Massachusetts Insane Hospital, to be held by that institution so long as one Hubert Ballantine remained an inmate of its walls.”

“Well?” eagerly gasped Perkins.

“I know no more.  It is for you to act in the matter; I could not.”

Without a moment’s delay, Perkins procured a vehicle, and in a little while was at the door of the institution.

“Is there a Mr. Ballantine in the asylum?” he asked, in breathless eagerness, of one of the attendants who answered his summons.

“No, sir,” was the reply.

“But,” said Perkins in a choking voice, “I have been told that there was a man here by that name.”

“So there was.  But he left here about five days ago, perfectly restored to reason.”

Perkins leaned for a moment or two against the wall to support himself.  His knees bent under him.  Then he asked in an agitated voice—­

“Is he in Boston?”

“I do not know.  He was from the South, and his daughter has, in all probability, taken him home.”