"This is what I came to tell you, Senator Winans. Mrs. Moreland is on the ocean with your little boy. I have already telegraphed to Liverpool to have her stopped when she lands there. I have found that a woman answering her description left on the steamer yesterday with a child answering the description of yours; with the cunning of insanity that poor creature probably saw the child at the moment of leaving, and kidnapped it with the thought that it was her own." He turned away, inured as he was to sorrow, from the white anguish of the father's face. "It is very probable you will get him back; don't give up all as lost," he said, cheerfully. "I will not," the stern energy of the man asserting itself. "We will follow them on the next steamer, and track every inch of ground till we find him. Every dollar I own shall be expended if necessary. But, oh, Heaven! I cannot--his mother--she is ill, wretched--perhaps death-stricken. I dare not leave here." "I don't know that it is necessary to follow them," Keene said, doubtfully. "If they get him in Liverpool, he can be sent home in the captain's care. You will not care, I suppose, to punish her. She is probably half insane, and under a natural hallucination that it was her own, and abducted it." "No, poor creature! she has already suffered enough," said Winans, pityingly. "Ah, by the way, Winans," here interposed the captain, "why not call and see your wife to-night, and learn if her illness is too serious to admit of your leaving; she may be better, and you at liberty to go. It seems the best thing under the circumstances, in my humble judgment, that you should pursue this woman as speedily as is possible." "Perhaps so. Then, Mr. Keene, I suppose we can do nothing more till to-morrow. If you will call on me at an early hour in the morning we will discuss the best steps to be taken in the matter." And there being no more to say on the subject, the detective bowed himself out, leaving the two friends alone together. "Fontenay, I am afraid to go to her. She would spurn me from her presence; I deserve it." He strode across the room, and began stirring the coal fire, shaking down the ashes, and tearing open its burning heart, just as wounded love and bitter pain and yearning were sweeping the ashes of pride and jealousy from his, and showing him the living fire that burned undimmed below. "You can but try," said the gallant captain. "'Faint heart never won fair lady.'" And Winans resolved to "try." CHAPTER XIV. "IN HIS HEART CONSENTING TO A PRAYER GONE BY." "The boon for which we gasp in vain, If hardly won at length, too late made ours, When the soul's wing is broken, comes like rain." --HEMANS. "Fare thee well! Yet think awhile On one whose bosom bleeds to doubt thee; Who now would rather trust than smile, And die with thee than live without thee."