Days and nights of travel followed, and during those days and nights Billy prayed that he would not find her in Montreal. If by some chance McTabb had discovered her relatives, if Isobel had revealed her secret to him before she died, his last hope in life was gone. He did not think of wasting time in the purchase of new clothes. That would have meant the missing of a train. He still wore his wilderness outfit, even to his fur cap. As he traveled farther eastward people began to regard him curiously. He got the porter to shave off his beard. But his hair was long. His moccasins and German socks were ragged and torn, and there were rents in his caribou-skin coat and his heavy Hudson's Bay sweater-shirt. The hardships he had gone through had left their lines in his face. There was something about him, outside of his strange attire, that made men look at him more than once. Women, more keenly observant than the men, saw the deep-seated grief in his eyes. As he approached Montreal he kept himself more and more aloof from the others. When at last the train came to a stop at the big station in the heart of the city he walked through the gates and strode up the hill toward Mount Royal. It was an hour or more past noon, and he had eaten nothing since morning. But he had no thought of hunger. Twenty minutes later he was at the foot of the street on which Isobel had told him that she had lived. One by one he passed the old houses of brick and stone, sheltered behind their solid walls. There had been no change in the years since he had been there. Half-way up the hill to the base of the mountain he saw an old gardener trimming ivy about an ancient cannon near a driveway. He stopped and asked: "Can you tell me where Geoffrey Renaud lives?" The old gardener looked at him curiously for a moment without speaking. Then he said: "Renaud? Geoffrey Renaud? That is his house up there behind the red-sandstone wall. Is it the house you want to see-- or Renaud?" "Both," said Billy. "Geoffrey Renaud has been dead for three years," informed the gardener. "Are you a-- relative?" "No, no," cried Billy, trying to keep his voice steady as he asked the next question. "There are others there. Who are they?" The old man shook his head. "I don't know." "There is a little girl there-- four-- five years old, with golden hair--" "She was playing in the garden when I came along a few moments ago," replied the gardener. "I heard her-- with the dog--"