They went again next day, and every day, together, and I think traversed Edinburgh almost street by street on a quest so hopeless that both had given it up in their heart before either breathed a word of her despair. Then they did what seemed even to Lily (and still more to Beenie) a most terrible and unparalleled thing to do, and to which she had great difficulty in bringing her mind. This was to apply to the police on the subject, what we should call putting it into the hands of the detectives. Perhaps even now there are innocent persons to whom the idea of “sending the police after” an innocent wanderer still seems a dreadful thing to do. And these were days in which the idea of the detective was little developed and still less understood. They are not always still the most successful of functionaries, but they have at least become heroes of the popular imagination, and a certain class of fiction is full of the wonderful deeds they have succeeded in doing, when all things were arranged to their hand. I do not know that there was a single individual of the order at that time in Edinburgh under the present title and conditions, but the thing must have existed more or less always; and when, with many hesitations and much trouble of mind, Lily made her appeal to the ingenuity of the police service to find the missing woman, it was with a little flutter of hope that she saw Margaret Bland’s name and description taken down. Beenie would not even be present when this was done. She lifted up her testimony, declaring that nothing would induce her to send the police after a decent honest woman that had never done any body any harm. “Oh, mem, you may say what you like,” Beenie cried. “She has had no ill intention. Send the pollisman after Anither if you will. It wasna her contrivancy, it wasna her contrivancy! I would sooner die myself than harry a woman to her ruin and take away her good name!” This had been the peroration with which Beenie had broken away, slamming the door in the face of the official who came to take Miss Ramsay’s orders. Lily was very unhappy and deeply depressed. She had no one to stand by her. “It is for no harm. You will understand she is to come to no harm. Her address only--that is all I want,” she cried. “We’ll put it,” said the man, writing down his notes in his little book, “that it will be something to her advantage. That or a creeminal chairge is the only way of dealing with yon kind of folk.” “Yes, yes--let it be something to her advantage,” Lily cried. “And it will,” she said, “it will! it will be more to her advantage than any thing she has ever known. You will take care that she is not frightened, not harmed in any way, not in any way!”