g into
the face of the infant nearest to her, she uttered a disappointed
moan. "'Tis not my baby!" she cried. She scanned the face of the second
infant--again she moaned.

Having begun to identify this hysterical creature as the possible mother
of the third infant, O'Flarety jerked his head in the direction of the
cradle.

"I guess you'll find what you're lookin' for in there," he said. Then
bidding Maggie to "git along out o' this" and shrugging his shoulders
to convey his contempt for the fugitive beneath the coverlet, he swept
quickly from the room.

Clasping her long-sought darling to her heart and weeping with delight,
the Italian mother was about to follow O'Flarety through the door when
Zoie staggered into the room, weak and exhausted.

"You, you!" called the indignant Zoie to the departing mother. "How dare
you lock my husband in the bathroom?" She pointed to the key, which the
woman still unconsciously clasped in her hand. "Give me that key," she
demanded, "give it to me this instant."

"Take your horrid old key," said the mother, and she threw it on the
floor. "If you ever try to get my baby again, I'll lock your husband in
JAIL," and murmuring excited maledictions in her native tongue, she took
her welcome departure.

Zoie stooped for the key, one hand to her giddy head, but Aggie, who had
just returned to the room, reached the key first and volunteered to go
to the aid of the captive Alfred, who was pounding desperately on the
bathroom door and demanding his instant release.

"I'll let him out," said Aggie. "You get into bed," and she slipped
quickly from the room.

Utterly exhausted and half blind with fatigue Zoie lifted the coverlet
and slipped beneath it. Her first sensation was of touching something
rough and scratchy, then came the awful conviction that the thing
against which she lay was alive.

Without stopping to investigate the identity of her uninvited
bed-fellow, or even daring to look behind her, Zoie fled from the room
emitting a series of screams that made all her previous efforts in that
direction seem mere baby cries. So completely had Jimmy been enveloped
in the coverlets and for so long a time that he had acquired a vague
feeling of aloftness toward the rest of his fellows, and had lost all
knowledge of their goings and comings. But when his unexpected companion
was thrust upon him he was galvanised into sudden action by her scream,
and swathed in a large pink comforter, he rol