luggage.

"I meant--so truly as Heaven hears me speak--I meant to do right by the
little child. I meant to work hard to keep her in a nice home. Oh, I
meant well!

"I was ashamed to go out in the streets with a little baby in my arms.

"'What shall I do if it cries?' I asked the kindly landlady. 'You can
prevent it from crying,' she said; 'give it some cordial.' 'What
cordial?' I asked, and she told me. 'Will it hurt the little one?' I
asked again, and she laughed.

"'No,' she replied, 'certainly not. Half the mothers in London give it
to their children. It sends them into a sound sleep, and they wake up
none the worse for it. If you give the baby just a little it will sleep
all the way to Brighton, and you will have no trouble.' I must say this
much for myself, that I knew nothing whatever of children, that is, of
such little children. I had never been where there was a baby so little
as my own.

"I bought the cordial, and just before I started gave the baby some. I
thought that I was very careful. I meant to be so. I would not for the
whole world have given my baby one half-drop too much.

"It soon slept a calm, placid sleep, and I noticed that the little face
grew paler. 'Your baby is dying,' said a woman, who was traveling in the
third-class carriage with me. 'It is dying, I am sure.' I laughed and
cried; it was so utterly impossible, I thought; it was well and smiling
only one hour ago. I never remembered the cordial. Afterwards, when I
came to make inquiries, I found that I had given her too much. I need
not linger on details.

"You see, that if my little one died by my fault, it was most
unconscious on my part; it was most innocently, most ignorantly done. I
make no excuse. I tell you the plain truth as it stands. I caused my
baby's death, but it was most innocently done; I would have given my own
life to have brought hers back. You, my judge, can you imagine any fate
more terrible than standing quite alone on the Brighton platform with a
dead child in my arms?

"I had very little money. I knew no soul in the place. I had no more
idea what to do with a dead child than a baby would have had. I call it
dead," she continued, "for I believe it to have been dead, no matter
what any doctor says. It was cold--oh, my Heaven, how cold!--lifeless;
no breath passed the little lips! the eyes were closed--the pretty hand
stiff. I believed it dead. I wandered down to the beach and sat down on
the stones.

"What was