Nobody did, it seemed. Dicky had gone to walk with Helen and Mary and when they came back and began to busy themselves about the luncheon he had slipped away. It was not until Captain Morton, who had reached Chautauqua a day earlier than he expected, and had followed them across in another launch, suddenly arrived and asked for Ethel Blue that they noticed that both Ethel Blue and Dicky were missing. The first point of search was the neighborhood of the rowboat where Ethel Brown had left her, and they must have come upon her only an instant after she had collapsed, for Dicky complained tearfully that "The hurted me and then the tumbled down."

Ethel Blue was the heroine of the day and not even her father was prouder of her than Ethel Brown, who patted her and praised her without stint.

So great was the disturbance created at home by Dicky's experience which necessitated the calling of a doctor to make sure that he and Ethel Blue were getting on safely, and so frequent were the runnings up and down stairs with hot water and hot cloths and hot drinks and dry clothes that it was nightfall before Mrs. Morton had a chance to ask her brother-in-law how it happened that he had a furlough just at that time. Ethel Blue had begged not to be sent to bed and she was lying in the hammock, wrapped in a blanket and holding her father's hand as if she were trying to keep him always beside her. The rest of the family had gone to bed or to the Amphitheatre.

"Is my namesake asleep?" inquired Captain Morton. "Then sit down and let me tell you why I am here. I asked for leave because something had happened that made me think that we might perhaps be able to find Sister Louise again."

"Oh, Richard! After all these years! Have you really a clue?"

"It seems to me a very good one. I was doing some inspection work at the time General Funston cleaned up Vera Cruz. It necessitated my going into a great many of the Mexican houses. In one of them—a rather small house in a shabby street—I saw on the wall looking down on me a picture of my sister."

"Of Louise! How could it have come there?"

"I was amazed. I stared at the thing with my mouth open. But I could not be mistaken; it was a photograph of her that I was familiar with, taken before she was married."

"Could you make the proprietor of the house understand that you knew her?"

"Oh, yes; I've picked up enough Spanish to get on pretty well now. The man said that the original of the picture, DoÑa Louisa, had boarded with them several years ago. It took a lot of calculation to remember how long ago, but he finally concluded that it was the year before his third son broke his leg, and that was in 1907, as far as I could make out."

"Eight years ago that she was there. How extraordinary! What became of her?"

"The story is a tragedy. Louise's husband—Don Leonardo, the Mexican called him—was a musician, as you know. That was the chief reason for Father's disliking him. It seems that he had wandered to Vera Cruz with the orchestra of a theatrical company that stranded there. He was in sore straits pretty often. 'The little girl used to cry from hunger,' my man said."

"Poor little thing!"

"It was the first I knew of there being a child. The father finally got work in the orchestra of a small theatre and managed to make a few pesos a week. That seems to have relieved the situation somewhat, but it also brought on Leonard the anger of some of the other musicians in town who had wanted the 'job' that he had secured."

"He probably needed it more than they."

"But he was a 'gringo' and they hated him. And"—with a glance toward Ethel Blue, swinging gently in the darkness, "and he died suddenly."

"Oh, poor Louise!" exclaimed Mrs. Morton, and "Poor little girl!" exclaimed Ethel.

"Somehow or other Louise managed to scrape together money enough to take the child back to the States, but there was business to be attended to and she left a permanent address with the SeÑor who had looked after some legal matters for her in Vera Cruz."

"Did you find him? Did he tell you the address?"

"I found him, and when he understood why I wanted to know he gave me the name of the Chicago lawyer whom she would always keep informed of her whereabouts."

"So you got a furlough and you're on your way to Chicago now?"

"I've been to Chicago."

"And the man knew? Did he tell you?"

"He knew. He told me. Where do you suppose she is?"

"I haven't the remotest idea, Richard."

"At Chautauqua."

"At Chautauqua!" repeated Mrs. Morton in a stupefied tone.

"Here!" cried Ethel Blue, amazed.

"Her address is here until September first. I hustled right on here, as you may imagine, to catch her before she left. Now the question is, how do you find out where people are on these grounds?"

"There is a registration office where everybody is supposed to register. Of course not every one does, but that is the first place to apply. We'll go there early in the morning."

"Of course you come upon hundreds of Smiths everywhere, but in a place of this size they may be present in scores instead of hundreds. Have you met any?"

"Two or three. There is a Mrs. Smith in my C. L. S. C. class, and there is one who has a cottage near the Hall of Philosophy, and there's Mother's embroidery teacher at the art store—she's a Mrs. Smith."

"Do you know the first names of any of them?"

"I don't. Do you know Dorothy's mother's name, Ethel?"

"I don't know, Aunt Marion. I'll ask her to-morrow."

"We'll hunt every Smith to his lair," said the Captain seriously; "and your lair is where you ought to be at this minute, young woman. Kiss me 'Good night.'"

The next morning immediately after breakfast, Mrs. Morton and her brother-in-law started off on their quest of the Chautauqua Smiths. Both Ethels were eager to go too, but the elders thought that the fewer people there were about when the meeting took place the less embarrassing it would be for their Aunt Louise.

"If you really do find her here," exclaimed Helen, "Roger will have to acknowledge that there is some romance left in the world."

Mrs. Smith had not reached the art store when Captain and Mrs. Morton stopped there on their way up the hill, so they went on to the registration office and looked through the cards in the catalogue.

"Here are Smiths from every State in the Union, I should say. Warren, Ohio; San Francisco, California; Boston, Massachusetts; Galena, Illinois; Wichita, Kansas; Bartow, Florida—"

"You can't tell anything from those home addresses, for to tell you the truth, I was so excited at getting this Chautauqua address from the Chicago man that I forgot to ask him where she had been before."

"Let's try the first names, then. We want L's, whether we're looking for 'Louise' or 'Leonard.'"

"Here's 'Lucy,' 'Laura,' 'Lester,' and one, two, three with just 'L.'"

"Those will be the ones for us to try first I'll copy their Chautauqua addresses," and Captain Morton drew out a notebook with a hand that trembled.

In spite of the number being so reduced, the search was disappointing. One Mrs. L. Smith lived near the College and proved to be a young woman with a black-eyed baby who demanded her attention imperatively when her callers asked about her acquaintances among the other Smiths of the place.

A second Mrs. L. Smith lived near the fence back of Alumni Hall and was as much too old as the first Mrs. Smith was too young. The third Mrs. L. Smith was just enough a matter of doubt to Captain Morton for him to begin his interview diplomatically.

"Have you ever been in Mexico?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered promptly, though evidently surprised.

"About how long ago?" ventured the Captain.

"It's nearly twenty years now. I was about twenty at the time."

The Mortons excused themselves and continued on their rounds.

"It's a rather doubtful experiment hunting up a person of middle age whom you haven't seen since she was a young woman. With all respect to the lady we just interviewed I'm glad she proves to be not my sister. But I can depend on your affection, Marion, to meet Louise with love no matter what sort of person she proves to be."

"You may, indeed. And I know she'll call out all my love. In the first place she's the sister of the best possible husband and the finest sort of brother-in-law, and in the next place she deserves love for the sake of the hardships she has been through."

"I saw Brother Roger for an hour just before I left Vera Cruz and he said that I could depend on you to be just as true to his as you were to him."

As they passed along the streets they stopped at two or three houses where Mrs. Morton remembered that she had met Smiths or where she could make inquiries about Smiths, but every call was fruitless.

"I believe we shall have to start a house to house search after dinner. Helen and Roger can help."

"We might stop here at the art store again as we pass," suggested Mrs. Morton.

Just at that moment Dorothy's mother came down the steps of the Arcade. She nodded pleasantly to Mrs. Morton, and then glanced at her companion.

"Richard!" she gasped. "Oh, Richard!"

"Louise! Is it Louise? Your hair! It's white!"

Mrs. Morton slipped an arm around Mrs. Smith's waist and drew her across the lawn to the shelter of the cottage.

"I'm so thankful it's you!" she exclaimed with a smile that relieved the tension of the meeting. "I like you so much better than any of the other Mrs. Smiths we have met this morning!"

"I guessed, of course, from your boys' names, that you were my brother's wife," said the newly found sister, sinking into a chair; "but the children said there was no chance of their father or their uncle coming North this summer, and you never had seen me, so I took the risk of staying on until the first of September when my engagement at the art store ends."

"Why didn't you tell me, Louise? It would have been such a happiness to me—to the children—to know. We've been defrauded of nearly two months' joy."

"I shall be going in a week or ten days more," stammered Mrs. Smith, looking at her brother.

"You can tell me your plans later," he answered, "but don't look at me as if I were driving you. Why, I came up here from Vera Cruz to find you and for no other purpose."

"You found a clue there?"

The slender woman seemed to shrink into her chair, her high-piled white hair shining against its red back and her eyes gleaming with tears.

He told her how he had come upon her picture.

"Did the Mexican tell you that my husband was shot there? My little Dorothy wakes even now in the night and thinks she hears voices whispering in the patio under her window, voices of the men that called her father out to his death."

"We can all help make her happy enough to forget the hard days—and you, too, dear Louise."

Mrs. Morton threw her arms around her sister as the Ethels and Dorothy came rushing into the room from their morning on the bathing beach.

"Children, there's good news. Dorothy is your very own cousin."

"Our cousin?"

"Really our cousin?"

"Grandfather Emerson always said our noses were alike."

"Nothing so good ever happened to us," and the Ethels seized Dorothy and the three went through the steps of the butterfly dance with joyous smiles that reassured Dorothy's mother as to her child's welcome into the family.

"I'm so glad it's you who are the Aunt Louise we've wanted to know all our lives," cried Helen softly, kissing her aunt.

Roger shook hands with her gravely, feeling himself the representative of his father on an occasion of such family importance.

The Ethels rushed on to the porch when they heard Dicky coming up the steps.

"Dicky, Dicky, we've got a new aunt! Come in and see her."

Dicky went slowly into the room for purposes of inspection.

"That ain't a new aunt," he exclaimed; "that'th jutht my fire lady," and he curled up like a kitten in his Aunt Louise's lap.