There, however, madame was stayed in her search for information.

Jean Jacques closed up, and did but smile when she adroitly set traps for him, and at last asked him outright where his daughter was.
Why he waited in Montreal it would be hard to say, save that it was a kind of middle place between the old life and the new, and also because he must decide what was to be his plan of search.

First the West--first Winnipeg, but where after that?
He had at last secured information of where Zoe and Gerard Fynes had stayed while in Montreal; and now he followed clues which would bring him in touch with folk who knew them.
He came to know one or two people who were with Zoe and Gerard in the last days they spent in the metropolis, and he turned over and over in his mind every word said about his girl, as a child turns a sweetmeat in its mouth.

This made him eager to be off; but on the very day he decided to start at once for the West, something strange happened.
It was towards the late afternoon of a Saturday, when the streets were full of people going to and from the shops in a marketing quarter, that Madame Glozel came to him and said: "M'sieu', I have an idea, and you will not think it strange, for you have a kind heart.

There is a woman--look you, it is a sad, sad story hers.