Lawrence waited a few days and then called at the Information Shop.  Again was Mr Candy absent; and so was the boy.  The cashier informed him that she had found—­that is, that the lady who kept the boarding-house had been found—­and she thought she remembered the gentlemen in question, and promised, as soon as she could, to look through a book, in which she used to keep directions for the forwarding of letters, and in this way another clew might soon be expected.

“This seems to be going on better,” said Lawrence, “but Mr Candy doesn’t show much in the affair.  Who is managing it?  You?”

The girl blushed and then laughed, a little confusedly.  “I am only the cashier,” she said.

“And the laborious duties of your position would, of course, give you no time for anything else,” remarked Lawrence.

“Oh, well,” said the girl, “of course it is easy enough for any one to see that I haven’t much to do as cashier, but the boy and Mr Candy are nearly always out, looking up things, and I have to do other business besides attending to cash.”

“If you are attending to my business,” said Lawrence, “I am very glad, especially now that it has reached the boarding-house stage, where I think a woman will be better able to work than a man.  Are you doing this entirely independent of Mr Candy?”

“Well, sir,” said the cashier, with an honest, straightforward look from her gray eyes that pleased Lawrence, “I may as well confess that I am.  But there’s nothing mean about it.  He has all the same as given it up, for he’s waiting to hear from a man at Niagara, who will never write to him, and probably hasn’t any thing to write, and as I advised you to pay the money I feel bound in honor to see that the business is done, if it can be done.”

“Have you a brother or a husband to help you in these investigations and searches?” asked Lawrence.

“No,” said the cashier with a smile.  “Sometimes I send our boy, and as to boarding houses, I can go to them myself after we shut up here.”

“I wish,” said Lawrence, “that you were married, and that you had a husband who would not interfere in this matter at all, but who would go about with you, and so enable you to follow up your clew thoroughly.  You take up the business in the right spirit, and I believe you would succeed in finding Mr Keswick, but I don’t like the idea of sending you about by yourself.”

“I won’t deny,” said the cashier, “that since I have begun this affair I would like very much to carry it out; so, if you don’t object, I won’t give it up just yet, and as soon as anything happens I’ll let you know.”

CHAPTER III.