the door on
me. "Is the baby asleep? I wonder if I might see her once more."

My heart was beating like an engine gone mad, in spite of my careless
tone, and there was a buzzing in my ears that deafened me. But I
managed to stand still and listen, and then to walk off, as though it
didn't matter in the least to me, while her words came smashing the
hope out of me.

"We've sent her with an officer back to the neighborhood where you
found her. He'll find out where she belongs, no doubt. Good day."

XV.

Ah me, Maggie, the miserable Nance that went away from that station!
To have had your future in your grasp, like that one of the Fates with
the string, and then to have it snatched from you by an impish breeze
and blown away, goodness knows where!

I don't know just which way I turned after I left that station. I
didn't care where I went. Nothing I could think of gave me any
comfort. I tried to fancy myself coming home to you. I tried to see
myself going down to tell the whole thing to Obermuller. But I
couldn't do that. There was only one thing I wanted to say to Fred
Obermuller, and that thing I couldn't say now.

But Nance Olden's not the girl to go round long like a molting hen.
There was only one chance in a hundred, and that was the one I took, of
course.

"Back to the Square where you found the baby, Nance!" I cried to
myself. "There's the chance that that admirable dragon has had her
suspicions aroused by your connection with the baby, which she hadn't
known before, and has already dutifully notified the Sergeant. There's
the chance that the baby is home by now, and the paper found by her
mother will be turned over to her papa; and then it's good-by to your
scheme. There's the chance that--"

But in the heart of me I didn't believe in any chance but one--the
chance that I'd find that blessed baby and get my fingers just once
more on that precious paper.

I blew in the A.D.'s nickel on a cross-town car and got back to the
little Square. There was another organ-grinder there grinding out
coon-songs, to which other piccaninnies danced. But nary a little
white bundle of fluff caught hold of my hand. I walked that Square
till my feet were sore. It was hot. My throat was parched. I was
hungry. My head ached. I was hopeless. And yet I just couldn't give
it up. I had asked so many children and nurse-maids whether they'd
heard of the baby lost that morning and brought back by an offic