the wilderness. The last time that I ever saw Arthur Stirling was in his
room the night before I left. He smiled very bravely and said that he would
keep his courage up, that he was pretty sure he would come out all right.

I did not expect him to write often--I knew that he was too poor for that;
but after six weeks had passed and I had not heard from him at all, I
wrote to a friend to go and see him. It developed that he had moved. The
lodging-house keeper could only say that he had left her his baggage, being
unable to pay his rent; and that he "looked sick." Where he went she did
not know, and all efforts of mine to find him were of no avail. The only
person that I knew of to ask was a certain young girl, a typewriter, who
had known him for years, and who had worshiped him with a strange and
terrible passion--who would have been his wife, or his slave, if he had not
been as iron in such things, a man so lost in his vision that I suppose he
always thought she was lost in it too. This girl had copied his manuscripts
for years, with the plea that he might pay her when he "succeeded"; and she
has all of his manuscripts now, except what I have, if she is alive. All
that we could learn was that she had "gone away"; I feel pretty certain
that she went in search of him.

In addition, all that I have to tell is that on Monday, June 9th last I
received a large express package from Arthur. It was sent from New York,
but marked as coming from another person--evidently to avoid giving an
address of his own. Upon opening it I found two packages, one of them
carefully sealed and marked upon the outside, The Captive; the other was
the manuscript of this journal, and upon the top of it was the following
letter:

MY DEAR ----: You have no doubt been wondering what has become
of me. I have been having a hard time of it. I wish I could