"Get me some whiskey, you brute!" cried out the stricken man. "That awful agony is coming again. Well, if you must know, she’s teaching school in a little forsaken village over beyond Schoharie—Butternuts, they call it. At least, she was till I appeared on the scene. Then she made away with herself somehow. I stayed three days, waiting for her, but she didn’t come back. I stopped off last week, and the people said she’d never returned. No one knew anything about her but a tow-headed boy who called himself Daniel and said he helped carry her bag to the stage-coach. Now get me that whiskey quick. I feel the pain coming again." Charles turned without a word and dashed downstairs to the landlady, demanding hot water and blankets. He knew little about illness, save what his mother’s semi-invalid state had taught him, but he had read enough in the papers lately to make him sure that Harrington had the cholera, and he knew that whiskey was not a remedy. Before he could return to his brother the doctor arrived, and together they went up to the sick man, who was writhing in agony, and again demanding whiskey. The old doctor shook his head when he saw the patient. "He has indulged in that article far too much already," he said. Then began a night of horror, followed by a day of stupor on the part of the patient. The doctor had said from the start that it was cholera, and that the disease was almost always fatal to persons of intemperate habits. Charles held himself steadily to the task of the moment, and tried to still the calling of his heart to fly at once and find Dawn. Not another word had he been able to get from his brother. The pain had been so intolerable that Harrington had been unable to speak, and little by little he grew delirious until he did not recognize any of them. At times he cried out as if in wild carouse. Once or twice he called "Alberta!" in an angry tone, then muttered Mr. Van Rensselaer’s name. Never once did he speak the name of Dawn. This fact gave Charles unspeakable relief. All through the night and day the doctor, the brother, and the father worked side by side, but each knew from the first that there was no hope, and at evening he died. They buried Harrington Winthrop in the old lot where rested the mortal remains of other more worthy members of the family; and the father turned away with bowed head and broken heart for such an ending to his elder son’s misspent life, and kept saying over to himself, "Has it been my fault? Has it been my fault?" They were almost home when Charles, who had been silent and thoughtful, touched the older man on the shoulder. "Father, shall you mind my going away at once?" he asked. "I have a clue, and must follow it." Mr. Winthrop lifted his grief-stricken head, and, looking at his son tenderly, said: "Go, my boy, and may you gain your heart’s desire!" CHAPTER XXV