For an instant Mr. Tiernan stood silent before her, his legs apart, his fingers running through his bristly hair.

“Well, ye did right to come straight to me, Miss Janet.  It’s me that can find out, if anybody can, and it’s glad I am to help you.  Just you stay here—­make yourself at home while I run down and see some of the boys.  I’ll not be long—­and don’t be afraid I’ll let on about it.”

He seized his overcoat and departed.  Presently the sun, glinting on the sheets of tin, started Janet’s glance straying around the shop, noting its disorderly details, the heaped-up stovepipes, the littered work-bench with the shears lying across the vise.  Once she thought of Ditmar arriving at the office and wondering what had happened to her....  The sound of a bell made her jump.  Mr. Tiernan had returned.

“She’s gone with him,” said Janet, not as a question, but as one stating a fact.

Mr. Tiernan nodded.

“They took the nine-thirty-six for Boston yesterday morning.  Eddy Colahan was at the depot.”

Janet rose.  “Thank you,” she said simply.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I’m going to Boston,” she answered.  “I’m going to find out where she is.”

“Then it’s me that’s going with you,” he announced.

“Oh no, Mr. Tiernan!” she protested.  “I couldn’t let you do that.”

“And why not?” he demanded.  “I’ve got a little business there myself.  I’m proud to go with you.  It’s your sister you want, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what would you be doing by yourself—­a young lady?  How will you find your sister?”

“Do you think you can find her?”

“Sure I can find her,” he proclaimed, confidently.  He had evidently made up his mind that casual treatment was what the affair demanded.  “Haven’t I good friends in Boston?” By friendship he swayed his world:  nor was he completely unknown—­though he did not say so—­to certain influential members of his race of the Boston police department.  Pulling out a large nickel watch and observing that they had just time to catch the train, he locked up his shop, and they set out together for the station.  Mr. Tiernan led the way, for the path was narrow.  The dry snow squeaked under his feet.

After escorting her to a seat on the train, he tactfully retired to the smoking car, not to rejoin her until they were on the trestle spanning the Charles River by the North Station.  All the way to Boston she had sat gazing out of the window at the blinding whiteness of the fields, incapable of rousing herself to the necessity of thought, to a degree of feeling commensurate with the situation.  She did not know what she would say to Lise if she should find her; and in spite of Mr. Tiernan’s expressed confidence, the chances of success seemed remote.  When the train began to thread the crowded suburbs, the city, spreading out over its hills, instead of thrilling her, as yesterday,