official
escort led the way back to the hotel with a very crestfallen air, savage
and sullen.

I found Miss Barton in a worse condition than ever, the persecutions of
the guarding policeman having continued with increased ferocity. He had
dogged every movement she made, until the poor girl had nearly gone mad;
and it was only after long persuasion that I induced her to sign the
paper, such a one as most travellers without passports in Austria are
obliged to fill out. She finally wrote her name in a great scrawl which
nobody could decipher, and gave as her country "Cape Town, Africa;"
which again confounded the men, as they had no idea how a "Hottentot"
could be an English subject. But they swallowed their ignorance, and
finally went away.

When Kate had become restored to her normal condition she heaped upon
herself all sorts of self-reproaches, and paid me extravagant
compliments for what she called "good sense" and "presence of mind." As
she demanded redress for the insults she had suffered, and as I wished
to know by what right an Austrian policeman privily searched the trunks
of American women who had the misfortune to come into the Austrian
dominions, we posted off to our respective national ambassadors. Kate
had the satisfaction of being told that she ought to congratulate
herself upon getting off as well as she did, since two of her
countrywomen had been arrested, put in jail and kept there for two weeks
upon even less grounds for suspicion. The result of our complaints was,
that the amplest official apologies were made by the Foreign Office, the
two policemen severely censured and degraded from rank, while, through
the influence of Herr Schwager, who went to the president of the police,
an officer was sent from that organization to apologize to us in person.
But what I cared most for I never got--an acknowledgment of the right of
the police to search baggage _a plaisir_.

As might have been expected, our liking for Vienna had been thoroughly
damped. From that moment Kate never saw an officer without fear and
trembling, and officers were everywhere. "To think," she exclaimed,
"that I have grown to be such a ninny! My brothers always said, 'Oh, we
can trust Kate to go anywhere: she never gets nervous or afraid;' and
here I am actually afraid to cross a street! I shall never have a
moment's peace until I get out of this horrid country."

At the end of a fortnight, having entirely missed her cousins, she
joined