I.

Matt Hilary saw Pinney, and easily got at the truth of his hopes and

possibilities concerning Northwick. He found that the reporter really

expected to do little more than to find his man, and make a newspaper

sensation out of his discovery. He was willing to forego this in the

interest of Northwick's family, if it could be made worth his while; he

said he had always sympathized with his family, and Mrs. Pinney had, and

he would be glad to be of use to them. He was so far from conceiving

that his account of the defalcation in the _Events_ could have been

displeasing to them, that he bore them none of an offender's malice. He

referred to his masterpiece in proof of his interest, and he promptly

agreed with Matt as to the terms of his visit to Canada, and its object.

It was, in fact, the more practicable, because, since he had written to

Maxwell, there had been a change in his plans and expectations. Pinney

was disappointed in the _Events'_ people; they had not seen his proposed

excursion as he had; the failure of Northwick's letter, as an

enterprise, had dashed their interest in him; and they did not care to

invest in Pinney's scheme, even so far as to guarantee his expenses.

This disgusted Pinney, and turned his thoughts strongly toward another

calling. It was not altogether strange to him; he had already done some

minor pieces of amateur detective work, and acquitted himself with

gratifying success; and he had lately seen a private detective, who

attested his appreciation of Pinney's skill by offering him a

partnership. His wife was not in favor of his undertaking the work,

though she could not deny that he had some distinct qualification for

it. The air of confidence which he diffused about him unconsciously, and

which often served him so well in newspaper life, was in itself the most

valuable property that a detective could have. She said this, and she

did not object to the profession itself, except for the dangers that she

believed it involved. She did not wish Pinney to incur these, and she

would not be laughed out of her fears when he told her that there were

lines of detective work that were not half so dangerous, in the long

run, as that of a reporter subject to assignment. She only answered that

she would much rather he kept along on the newspaper. But this offer to

look up Northwick in behalf of his family, was a different affair. That

would give them a chance for their outing in Canada, and pay them better

than any newspaper enterprise. They agreed to this, and upon how much

good it would do the baby, and they imagined how Mrs. Pinney should stay

quietly at Quebec, while Pinney went about, looking up his man, if that

was necessary.

"And then," he said, "if I find him, and all goes well, and I can get

him to come home with me by moral suasion, I can butter my bread on both

sides. There's a reward out for him; and I guess I will just qualify as

a detective before we start, so as to be prepared for emergencies--"

"Lorenzo Pinney!" screamed his wife. "Don't you think of such a wicked

thing! So dishonorable!"

"How wicked? How dishonorable?" demanded Pinney.

"I'm ashamed to have to tell you, if you don't see; and I _won't_. But

if you go as a detective, _go_ as a detective; and if you go as their

friend, to help them and serve them, then go that way. But don't you try

to carry water on both shoulders. If you do, I won't stir a step with

you; so there!"

"Ah!" said Pinney, "I understand. I didn't catch on, at first. Well, you

needn't be afraid of my mixing drinks. I'll just use the old fellow for

practice. Very likely he may lead to something else in the defaulter

line. You won't object to that?"

"No; I won't object to that."

They had the light preparations of young housekeepers to make, and they

were off to the field of Pinney's work in a very few days after he had

seen Matt, and told him that he would talk it over with his wife. At

Quebec he found board for his family at the same hotel where Northwick

had stopped in the winter, but it had kept no recognizable trace of him

in the name of Warwick on its register. Pinney passed a week of search

in the city, where he had to carry on his investigations with an eye not

only to Northwick's discovery, but to his concealment as well. If he

could find him he must hide him from the pursuit of others, and he went

about his work in the journalistic rather than the legal way. He had not

wholly "severed his connection," as the newspaper phrase is, with the

_Events_. He had a fast and loose relation with it, pending a closer tie

with his friend, the detective, which authorized him to keep its name on

his card; and he was soon friends with all the gentlemen of the local

press. They did not understand, in their old-fashioned, quiet ideal of

newspaper work, the vigor with which Pinney proposed to enjoy the

leisure of his vacation in exploiting all the journalistic material

relating to the financial exiles resident in their city. But they had a

sort of local pride in their presence, and with their help Pinney came

to know all that was to be known of them. The colony was not large, but

it had its differences, its distinctions, which the citizens were very

well aware of. There are defaulters and defaulters, and the blame is not

in all cases the same, nor the breeding of the offenders. Pinney learned

that there were defaulters who were in society, and not merely because

they were defaulters for large sums and were of good social standing at

home, but because there were circumstances that attenuated their offence

in the eyes of the people of their city of refuge; they judged them by

their known intentions and their exigencies, as the justice they had

fled from could not judge them. There were other defaulters of a

different type and condition, whose status followed them: embezzlers who

had deliberately planned their misdeeds, and who had fallen from no

domestic dignity in their exclusion from respectable association abroad.

These Pinney saw in their walks about the town; and he was not too

proud, for the purposes of art, to make their acquaintance, and to study

in their vacancy and solitude the dulness and weariness of exile. They

did not consort together, but held aloof from one another, and professed

to be ignorant each of the affairs of the rest. Pinney sympathized in

tone if not in sentiment with them, but he did not lure them to the

confidence he so often enjoyed; they proved to be men of reticent

temper; when frankly invited to speak of their history and their hopes

in the interest of the reputations they had left behind them, they said

they had no statement to make.

It was not from them that Pinney could hope to learn anything of the man

he was seeking; Northwick was not of their order, morally or socially,

and from the polite circles where the more elect of the exiles moved,

Pinney was himself excluded by the habits of his life and by the choice

of the people who formed those circles. This seemed to Pinney rather

comical, and it might have led him to say some satirical things of the

local society, if it had been in him to say bitter things at all. As it

was, it amused his inexhaustible amiability that an honest man like

himself should not be admitted to the company of even the swellest

defaulters when he was willing to seek it. He regretted that it should

be so, mainly because Northwick could have been heard of among them, if

at all; and when all his other efforts to trace him at Quebec failed, he

did not linger there. In fact he had not expected to find him there, but

he had begun his search at that point, because he must stop there on his

way to Rimouski, where Northwick's letter to the _Events_ was posted.

This postmark was the only real clue he had; but he left no stone

unturned at Quebec, lest Northwick should be under it. By the time he

came to the end of his endeavors, Mrs. Pinney and the baby were on such

friendly terms with the landlady of the hotel where they were staying,

that Pinney felt as easy at parting from them as he could ever hope to

feel. His soft heart of husband and father was torn at leaving them

behind; but he did not think it well to take them with him, not knowing

what Rimouski might be like, or how long he might be kept remote from an

English-speaking, or English-practising, doctor. He got a passage down

the river on one of the steamers for Liverpool; and with many vows, in

compliance with his wife's charges, that he would not let the vessel by

any chance carry him on to Europe, he rent himself away. She wagged the

baby's hand at him from the window where she stood to watch him getting

into the calash, and the vision of her there shone in his tears, as the

calash dashed wildly down Mountain Hill Street, and whirled him through

the Lower Town on to the steamer's landing. He went to his stateroom as

soon as he got aboard, that he might give free course to his heartache,

and form resolutions to be morally worthy of getting back alive to them,

and of finding them well. He would, if he could, have given up his whole

enterprise; and he was only supported in it by remembering what she had

said in praise of its object. She had said that if he could be the means

of finding their father for those two poor women, she should think it

the greatest thing that ever was; and more to be glad of than if he

could restore him to his creditors. Pinney had laughed at this womanish

view of it; he had said that in either case it would be business, and

nothing else; but now his heart warmed with acceptance of it as the only

right view. He pledged himself to it in anticipative requital of the

Providence that was to bring them all together again, alive and well;

good as he had felt himself to be, when he thought of the love in which

he and his wife were bound, he had never experienced so deep and

thorough a sense of desert as in this moment. He must succeed, if only

to crown so meritorious a marriage with the glory of success and found

it in lasting prosperity.