usie's eager hands that snatched it out. Then they saw that it was
indeed a child, a poor, helpless, grieving little baby.

It had nothing on at all, not even a rag. Perhaps they had not had
time to dress it.

"Oh, it will fit my dolly's jacket!" cried Susie, dancing around and
hugging it in glee. "It will, mamma! A real live baby! Now Tilde
needn't brag of theirs. We will take it home, won't we, mamma?"

The bands brayed, and the flickering light of many torches filled the
night. The procession had gone down the street, and the crowd with it.
The poor woman wrapped the baby in her worn shawl and gave it to the
girl to carry. And Susie carried it, prouder and happier than any of
the men that marched to the music. So they arrived home. The little
stranger had found friends and a resting-place.

But not for long. In the morning Mrs. Lepanto took counsel with the
neighbors, and was told that the child must be given to the police.
That was the law, they said, and though little Susie cried bitterly at
having to part with her splendid new toy, Mrs. Lepanto, being a
law-abiding woman, wrapped up her find and took it to the Macdougal
Street station.

That was the way it got to Headquarters with the morning mail, and
how Sergeant Jack got a chance to tell all he didn't know about
babies. Matron Travers knew more, a good deal. She tucked the little
heathen away in a trundle-bed with a big bottle, and blessed silence
fell at once on Headquarters. In five minutes the child was asleep.

While it slept, Matron Travers entered it in her book as "No. 103" of
that year's crop of the gutter, and before it woke up she was on the
way with it, snuggled safely in a big gray shawl, up to the Charities.
There Mr. Bauer registered it under yet another number, chucked it
under the chin, and chirped at it in what he probably thought might
pass for baby Chinese. Then it got another big bottle and went to
sleep once more.

At ten o'clock there came a big ship on purpose to give the little
Mott Street waif a ride up the river, and by dinner-time it was on a
green island with four hundred other babies of all kinds and shades,
but not one just like it in the whole lot. For it was New York's first
and only Chinese foundling. As to that Superintendent Bauer, Matron
Travers, and Mrs. Lepanto agreed. Sergeant Jack's evidence doesn't
count, except as backed by his superiors. He doesn't know a heathen
baby when he sees one.

The island where the w