s house
and learned from tearful Aline that his father was missing.

The horse was at the stable door when young Jacob mounted him once more
and galloped off to Bond Street, where he found the doctor just ready to
turn down the Bowery; and they joined forces and hurried back, and down
Broadway, inquiring of the people who sat on their front stoops--it was
a late spring evening, warm and fair--if they had seen old Mr. Dolph
that day.

Many had seen him as he went down; but no one could remember that the
old gentleman had come back over his accustomed path. At St. Paul's, the
sexton thought that Mr. Dolph had prolonged his walk down the street.
Further on, some boys had seen him, still going southward. The searchers
stopped at one or two of the houses where he might have called; but
there was no trace of him. It was long since old Jacob Dolph had made a
formal call.

But at Bowling Green they were hailed by Mr. Philip Waters, who came
toward them with more excitement in his mien than a young man of good
society often exhibited.

"I was going for a carriage, Dolph," he said: "your father is down there
in the Battery Park, and I'm afraid--I'm afraid he's had a stroke of
paralysis."

They hurried down, and found him lying on the grass, his head on the lap
of a dark-skinned, ear-ringed Spanish sailor. He had been seen to fall
from the bench near by, another maritime man in the crowd about him
explained.

"It was only a minit or two ago," said the honest seafarer, swelled with
the importance that belongs to the narrator of a tale of accident and
disaster. "He was a-settin' there, had been for two hours 'most, just
a-starin' at them houses over there, and all of a sudden chuck forward
he went, right on his face. And then a man come along that knowed him,
and said he'd go for a kerridge, or I'd 'a' took him on my sloop--she's
a-layin' here now, with onions from Weathersfield--and treated him
well; I see he wa'n't no disrespectable character. Here, Pedro, them's
the old man's folks--let 'em take him. A-settin' there nigh on two
hours, he was, just a-studyin' them houses. B'long near here?"

[Illustration]

Young Jacob had no words for the Connecticut captain. Waters had
arrived, with somebody's carriage, confiscated on the highway, and they
gently lifted up the old gentleman and set off homeward. They were just
in time, for Waters had been the earliest of the evening promenaders to
reach the Battery. It was dinner hour