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 and we went, and right by us, day or night, in sun or shade, from that hour on a black shadder walked by the side on us in place of the dimpled, merry face of the little maid. We didn't forgit her in the highest places or the lowest. And after days and days had passed I felt guilty, and as if I hadn't ort to be happy, and no knowin' where she'd drifted to in the cruel under world, and wuz like sea-weed driftin' in the ocean current. And when we wuz out evenin's, no matter where I wuz, I watched the faces of every painted, gaudy dressed creeter I see, flittin' down cross streets, hoping and dreading to see Aronette's little form. Arvilly and Miss Meechim openly and loudly, and Dorothy's pale face and sorrowful eyes, told the story that they too wuz on the watch and would always be. But never did we catch a glimpse of her! never, never.