, my dear madam, I found it!" cried the parson.

Miss Betty bridled and bit her lip.

"I never contradict a clergyman, sir," said she, "but I can only say
that if you did see it, it was not like your usual humanity to leave it
lying there."

I've got it in my hand, ma'am!"
"Why
He's got it in his hand, sister!"

cried the parson and Miss Kitty in one breath. Miss Betty was too much
puzzled to be polite.

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

"The diamond, oh dear, oh dear! _The diamond!_" cried Miss Kitty. "But
what are you talking about, sister?"

"_The baby_" said Miss Betty.

WHAT MISS BETTY FOUND.

It was found under a broom-bush. Miss Betty was poking her nose near the
bank that bordered the wood, in her hunt for the diamond, when she
caught sight of a mass of yellow of a deeper tint than the mass of
broom-blossom above it, and this was the baby.

This vivid color, less opaque than "deep chrome" and a shade more
orange, seems to have a peculiar attraction for wandering tribes.
Gipsies use it, and it is a favorite color with Indian squaws. To the
last dirty rag it is effective, whether it flutters near a tent on
Bagshot Heath, or in some wigwam doorway makes a point of brightness
against the grey shadows of the pine forest.

A large kerchief of this, wound about its body, was the baby's only
robe, but he seemed quite comfortable in it when Miss Betty found him,
sleeping on a pillow of deep hair moss, his little brown fists closed as
fast as his eyes, and a crimson toadstool grasped in one of them.

When Miss Betty screamed the baby awoke, and his long black lashes
tickled his cheeks and made him wink and cry. But by the time she
returned with her sister and the parson, he was quite happy again,
gazing up with dark eyes full of delight into the glowing broom-brush,
and fighting the evening breeze with his feet, which were entangled in
the folds of the yellow cloth, and with the battered toadstool which was
still in his hand.

"And, indeed, sir," said Miss Betty, who had rubbed her nose till it
looked like the twin toadstool to that which the baby was flourishing in
her face, "you won't suppose I would have left the poor little thing
another moment, to catch its death of cold on a warm evening like this;
but having no experience of such cases, and remembering that murder at
the inn in the Black Valley, and that the body was not allowed to be
moved till the constables ha