I leaped up suddenly and wandered about the house and the garden like a dog searching miserably for a departed loved one. There was the stream—but I turned from it shivering. No—that was impossible! The sense of life in Alicia, her vitality, was too potent, too radiant to suffer extinction. I looked up at my little nest from the edge of the muddy stream, that frail eyrie upon the rock that I had felt so nestling, secure; barred by the trunks of intervening trees, it now seemed a prison. A faint breeze that was stirring the leaves made them murmurous with secret things which my heart cried out to interpret. Was it a litany, a dirge, or a whisper of hope? I could not read the riddle, but my bruised spirit was passionately clinging to hope. Dibdin pretended not to observe my vagaries; when I returned I found him absorbed in Epictetus. "This is rather good," he growled, pointing to a passage and puffing his pipe as he spoke: "Have you not received facilities by which you may support any event? Have you not received a manly soul? Have you not received patience?" "Yes," I muttered dejectedly, "all very well, but Epictetus never lost Alicia." Dibdin laughed shortly. "Now," he said, "we must start out to find her. Though my feeling is she’ll come back of her own accord very soon. The girl was frightened—no more." I ignored the last part of his speech but leaped at the first. "How would you start?" I queried sharply. "What is the high-sounding name of that institution where she was brought up?" "Oh, don’t tell them, for Heaven’s sake," I cried out in alarm. "If she is not there and they learn I have lost her, they’ll never consent to my adopting her; they’ll consider me irresponsible." "Don’t let’s be fools," retorted Dibdin. "Those people are not. Do you know how many boys, girls, men and women turn up ’willfully missing’ every year?" No, I didn’t know. "But, by George!" he suddenly clapped his forehead in a burst of inspiration—"Sergeant Cullum! Ever hear of Sergeant Cullum?." I shook my head. "He is a policeman I know who has a genius for finding missing persons. It’s positively a sixth sense with him. He’s a prodigy—has traveled everywhere—a human bloodhound—he is the man to go to!" "But—the police!" I stammered. "Yes, I know—but we’ll see whether we can make him take this as a private case—out of hours—I’ll find him!" The surge of hope to my eyes must have told Dibdin better than any words I could have uttered what I felt at that instant. "But first we’ll call that institution," he directed. "You put in a call for the number and I’ll tell you what to say." "You needn’t," I decided after a moment’s reflection. "I know. I shall simply inquire about the regulations governing adoptions. I can so word it that if Alicia is there they will tell me." "Ah, now your brain is functioning again," he concluded. "That being so, I shall leave you and look up Cullum at the bureau of missing persons."