up from the bundle and says, 'Mind, sir, whatever you do, the child's
not to be took away from this person here, and sent to the workhouse.
The mother give it to her on that very bed, and I'm a witness of it.'
'And I promised to be a mother to the baby, sir,' says I. He turns round
to me, and praises me for what I done, and says nobody shall take it
away from me, unless them as can show their right comes forward to claim
it. 'But now,' says he, 'we must think of other things. We must try
and find out something about this poor woman who has died in such a
melancholy way.'

"It was easier to say that than to do it. The poor thing had nothing
with her but a change of linen for herself and the child, and that
gave us no clue. Then we searched her pocket. There was a cambric
handkerchief in it, marked 'M. G.;' and some bits of rusks to sop for
the child; and the sixpence and halfpence which she had when I met her;
and beneath all, in a corner, as if it had been forgotten there, a small
hair bracelet. It was made of two kinds of hair--very little of one
kind, and a good deal of the other. And on the flat clasp of the
bracelet there was cut in tiny letters, _'In memory of S. G.'_ I
remember all this, sir, for I've often and often looked at the bracelet
since that time.

"We found nothing more--no letters, or cards, or anything. The clergyman
said that the 'M. G.' on the handkerchief must be the initials of
her name; and the 'S. G.' on the bracelet must mean, he thought, some
relation whose hair she wore as a sort of keepsake. I remember Peggy and
me wondering which was S. G.'s hair; and who the other person might be,
whose hair was wove into the bracelet. But the clergyman he soon cut us
short by asking for pen, ink, and paper directly. 'I'm going to write
out an advertisement,' says he, 'saying how you met with the young
woman, and what she was like, and how she was dressed.' 'Do you mean to
say anything about the baby, sir?' says I. 'Certainly,' says he; 'it's
only right, if we get at her friends by advertising, to give them the
chance of doing something for the child. And if they live anywhere in
county, I believe we shall find them out; for the _Bangbury Chronicle,_
into which I mean to put the advertisement, goes everywhere in our part
of England.'

"So he sits down, and writes what he said he would, and takes it away to
be printed in the next day's number of the newspaper. 'If nothing
comes of this,' says he, 'I thin