ng you in Crook Lane, sir, the day we christened my
byeby, and I waited, thinking p'raps you could help me."

"Come this way," said John, and walking by his side along the blank wall
of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the girl told her story. She lived in one room
of the clergy-house at the back of his church. Having to earn her living,
she had answered an advertisement in a Sunday paper, and Mrs. Jupe had
taken her baby to nurse. It was true she had given up all claim to the
child, but she could not help going to see it--the little one's ways were
so engaging. Then she found that Mrs. Jupe had let it out to somebody
else. Only for her "friend" she might never have heard of it again. He
had found it by accident at a house in Westminster. It was a fearful
place, where men went for gambling. The man who kept it had just been
released from eighteen months' imprisonment, and the wife had taken to
nursing while the husband was in prison. She was a frightful woman, and
he was a shocking man, and "they knocked the children about cruel." The
neighbours heard screams and slaps and moans, and they were always crying
"Shame!" She had wanted to take her own baby away, but the woman would
not give it up because there were three weeks' board owing, and she could
not pay.

"Could you take me to this house, my child?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then come round to the church after service to-morrow night."

The girl's tearful face glistened like April sunshine.

"And will you help me to get my little girl? Oh, how good you are!
Everybody is saying what a Father it is that's come to----" She stopped,
then said quite soberly: "I'll get somebody to lend me a shawl to bring
'er 'ome in. People say they pawn everything, and perhaps the beautiful
white perlice I bought for 'er... Oh, I'll never let 'er out of my sight
again, never!"

"What is your name, my girl?"

"Agatha Jones," the girl answered.

It was nearly eleven o'clock on Sunday night before they were ready to
start on their errand. Meantime Aggie had done two turns at the foreign
clubs, and John Storm had led a procession through Crown Street and been
hit by a missile thrown by a "Skeleton," whom he declined to give in
charge. At the corner of the alley he stopped to ask Mrs. Pincher to wait
up for him, and the girl's large eyes caught sight of the patch of
plaster above his temple.

"Are you sure you want to go, sir?" she said.

"There's no time to lose," he answered. The bloodhound was wit