The Whalens and the twins, however, did not prove to be so easily found. They certainly were not at the address given in Clarabella's letter. The place was occupied by strangers--people who had never heard the name of Whalen. It took two days of time and innumerable questions to find anybody in the neighborhood, in fact, who had heard the name of Whalen; but at last patience and diligence were rewarded, and early on the third morning Margaret and Patty started out to follow up a clew given them by a woman who had known the Whalens and who remembered them well. Even this, however, promising as it was, did not lead to immediate success, and it was not until the afternoon of the fifth day that Margaret and Patty toiled up four flights of stairs and found a little bent old woman sitting in a green satin-damask chair that neither Margaret nor Patty could fail to recognize. "Do I remember 'Maggie'? 'Mag of the Alley'?" quavered the old woman excitedly in response to Margaret's questions. "Sure, an' of course I do! She was the tirror of the hull place till she was that turned about that she got ter be a blissed angel straight from Hiven. As if I could iver forgit th' swate face of Mag of the Alley!" "Oh, but you have," laughed Margaret, "for I myself am she." "Go 'way wid ye, an' ye ain't that now!" cried the old woman, peering over and through her glasses, and finally snatching them off altogether. "But I am. And this is Mrs. Durgin, who used to be Patty Murphy. Don't you remember Patty Murphy?" Mrs. Whalen fell back in her chair. "Saints of Hiven, an' is it the both of yez, all growed up ter be sich foine young ladies as ye be? Who'd 'a' thought it!" "It is, and we've come to you for help," rejoined Margaret. "Do you remember Patty Murphy's sisters, the twins? We are trying to find them, and we thought perhaps you could tell us where they are." Mrs. Whalen shook her head. "I knows 'em, but I don't know whar they be now." "But you did know," interposed Patty. "You must 'a' known four--five years ago, for my little Maggie was jest born when the twins come ter New York an' found ye. They wrote how they was livin' with ye." The old woman nodded her head. "I know," she said, "I know. We was livin' over by the Alley. But they didn't stay. My old man he died an' we broke up. Sure, an' I'm nothin' but a wanderer on the face of the airth iver since, an' I'm grown old before my time, I am." "But, Mrs. Whalen, just think--just remember," urged Margaret. "Where did they go? Surely you can tell that." Again Mrs. Whalen shook her head. "Mike died, an' Tom an' Mary, they got married, an' Jamie, sure an' he got his leg broke an' they tuk him ter the horspital--bad cess to 'em! An' 'twas all that upsettin' that I didn't know nothin' what did happen. I seen 'em--then I didn't seen 'em; an' that's all thar was to it. An' it's the truth I'm a-tellin' yez."