with many injunctions, and upon many promises,
that at last he told Pinney where Mr. Warwick was living, and furnished
him with a letter which was at once warrant and warning to the exile.

Pinney took the first train back toward Quebec; he left it at St. Andre,
and crossed the St. Lawrence to Malbaie. He had no trouble there, in
finding the little hostelry where Mr. Warwick lodged. But Pinney's
spirit, though not of the greatest delicacy, had become sensitized
toward the defaulter through the scrupulous regard for him shown by Pere
Etienne no loss than by the sense of holding almost a filial relation to
him in virtue of his children's authorization. So his heart smote him at
the ghastly look he got, when he advanced upon Warwick, where he sat at
the inn-door, in the morning sun, and cheerily addressed him, "Mr.
Northwick, I believe."

It was the first time Northwick had heard his real name spoken since
Putney had threatened him in the station, the dark February morning when
he fled from home. The name he had worn for the last five months was
suddenly no part of him, though till that moment it had seemed as much
so as the white beard which he had suffered to hide his face.

"I don't expect you to answer me," said Pinney, feeling the need of
taking, as well as giving time, "till you've looked at this letter, and
of course I've no wish to hurry you. If I'm mistaken, and it isn't Mr.
Northwick, you won't open the letter."

He handed him, not the letter which Pere Etienne had given him, but the
letter Suzette Northwick had written her father; and Pinney saw that he
recognized the hand-writing of the superscription. He saw the letter
tremble in the old man's hand, and heard its crisp rustle as he clutched
it to keep it from falling to the ground. He could not bear the sight of
the longing and the fears that came into his face. "No hurry; no hurry,"
he said, kindly, and turned away.

III.

When Pinney came back from the little turn he took, Northwick was still
holding the unopened letter in his hand. He stood looking at it in a
kind of daze, and he was pale, and seemed faint.

"Why, Mr. Northwick," said Pinney, "why don't you read your letter? If
it hadn't been yours, don't I know that you'd have given it back to me
at once?"

"It isn't that," said the man, who was so much older and frailer than
Pinney had expected to find him. "But--are they well? Is it--bad news?"

"No!" Pinney exulted. "They're first-rat