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.

II.

These emotions still filled Pinney to the throat when at last he left
his cabin and went forward to the smoking-room, where he found a number
of veteran voyagers enjoying their