n 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