Great was his amazement upon arriving there to find that it was a place so large, and one of many large places; and that to inquire for his family there was of as little utility as it would be to ask for his master’s dog in Dublin. It was a sad trial to Patrick that he had come to a strange land, he verily believed, to no purpose. But it was necessary for him to do, or starve, and finding employment he worked, with a heavy heart it is true, but not without hope. Chance—or we should better say Providence—directed him to a priest, to whom he related his difficult position and almost extinguished hopes. The kind father was struck with his tale, and, after a moment’s pondering referred to his record of priestly acts, and sure enough, there he found the name of Ellen O’Brien—O’Brien no longer! “Mighty easy it was then, for her to come over,” shouted Pat, forgetting his Reverence. Fine talk hers to me about selfishness, and drowning, and all that. Very pleasant it was, no doubt of it, to write and read them long letters. But it has given me the first trace of them anyhow, and that’s something. With this clue the persevering young Irishman was not long in tracing the party to their late stopping-place—_late_, for they were there no longer. He followed to Albany, and there again lost the scent; for a party of poor emigrants are not so easily followed. Again he heard of them in Buffalo; away, it seemed to him, at the verge of the world; and again he pursued. “Sure he would find them now,” he said, “if it was only to have a fly at that traitor, Ellen—God bless her!” In Buffalo he was once more disappointed, for from Buffalo they had flitted also. “It’s the Wandering Jew Ellen has married, no doubt,” he said, “to lead me this dance, and she to rate _me_ so. Wait till I find them once more.” Time would be unprofitably spent in tracing all poor Patrick’s journeyings, including many an excursion from the main routes. Wherever the sinews of his countrymen were busy upon public works and other enterprises, in which the labor of the sturdy Hibernian is found so valuable, there Patrick wandered—and patient perseverance at last was rewarded. He had traced out an impromptu village on a rail-road truck, where the delvers had put up cabins which they would sorrow to leave. As he looked curiously through the little settlement, he was startled to hear his own name shouted, and in a moment more one of his many brothers had him by the neck, with a hug as stifling as if he had taken lessons in the new country of one of those undisputed natives—the black bear.