“And where then?  I’ll come along, if there’s a chance for me.”

“Quit your kidding,” Lise reproved him.

Mr. Tiernan suddenly looked very solemn: 

“Kidding, is it?  Me kiddin’ you?  Give me a chance, that’s all I’m asking.  Where will you be, now?”

“Is Frear wanted?” she demanded.

Mr. Tiernan’s expression changed.  His nose seemed to become more pointed, his eyes to twinkle more merrily than ever.  He didn’t take the trouble, now, to conceal his admiration.

“Sure, Miss Bumpus,” he said, “if you was a man, we’d have you on the force to-morrow.”

“What’s he wanted for?”

“Well,” said Johnny, “a little matter of sprinklin’.  He’s been sprinklin’ his company’s water without a license.”

She was silent a moment before she exclaimed:—­“I ought to have been wise that he was a crook!”

“Well,” said Johnny consolingly, “there’s others that ought to have been wise, too.  The Cascade people had no business takin’ on a man that couldn’t use but half of his mouth.”

This seemed to Lise a reflection on her judgment.  She proceeded to clear herself.

“He was nothing to me.  He never gave me no rest.  He used to come ’round and pester me to go out with him—­”

“Sure!” interrupted Mr. Tiernan.  “Don’t I know how it is with the likes of him!  A good time’s a good time, and no harm in it.  But the point is” and here he cocked his nose—­“the point is, where is he?  Where will he be tonight?”

All at once Lise grew vehement, almost tearful.

“I don’t know—­honest to God, I don’t.  If I did I’d tell you.  Last night he said he might be out of town.  He didn’t say where he was going.”  She fumbled in her bag, drawing out an imitation lace handkerchief and pressing it to her eyes.

“There now!” exclaimed Mr. Tiernan, soothingly.  “How would you know?  And he deceivin’ you like he did the company—­”

“He didn’t deceive me,” cried Lise.

“Listen,” said Mr. Tiernan, who had risen and laid his hand on her arm.  “It’s not young ladies like you that works and are self-respecting that any one would be troublin’, and you the daughter of such a fine man as your father.  Run along, now, I won’t be detaining you, Miss Bumpus, and you’ll accept my apology.  I guess we’ll never see him in Hampton again....”

Some twenty minutes later he sauntered down the street, saluting acquaintances, and threading his way across the Common entered a grimy brick building where a huge policeman with an insignia on his arm was seated behind a desk.  Mr. Tiernan leaned on the desk, and reflectively lighted a Thomas-Jefferson-Five-Cent Cigar, Union Label, the excellencies of which were set forth on large signs above the “ten foot” buildings on Faber Street.

“She don’t know nothing, Mike,” he remarked.  “I guess he got wise this morning.”

The sergeant nodded....