But there came no response.

Days and weeks passed; and though the advertisements were repeated and newspapers called public attention to the matter, not a single clue was found.
A young man, with the kisses of his mother sweet on his pure lips, had left her for an evening's social enjoyment at the house of one of her closest and dearest friends, and she never looked upon his face again.
He had entered the house of that friend with a clear head and steady nerves, and he had gone out at midnight bewildered with the wine that had been poured without stint to her hundred guests, young and old.

How it had fared with him the reader knows too well..