e.
Ah, Heaven! the change that came over her, the passion of mother love
that came into her face; she was transformed.

"Let me hold the little one for you," she said, "while you rest for a
few minutes;" and the poor, young mother gratefully accepted the offer.

What a picture she made in the gloomy room of the little cottage, her
beautiful face and shining hair, her dress sweeping the ground, and the
tiny child lying in her arms.

"Does it suffer much?" she asked, in her sweet, compassionate voice.

"It did, ma'am," replied the mother, "but I have given it something to
keep it quiet."

"Do you mean to say that you have drugged it?" asked Mrs. Fleming.

"Only a little cordial, ma'am, nothing more; it keeps it sleeping; and
when it sleeps it does not suffer."

She shook her beautiful head.

"It is a bad practice," she said; "more babes are killed by drugs than
die a natural death."

I was determined she should look at me; I stepped forward and touched
the child's face.

"Do you not think it is merciful at times to give a child like this
drugs when it has to die; to lessen the pain of death--to keep it from
crying out?"

Ah, me, that startled fear that leaped into her eyes, the sudden quiver
on the beautiful face.

"I do not know," she said; "I do not understand such things."

"What can it matter," I said, "whether a little child like this dies
conscious or not? It cannot pray--it must go straight to Heaven! Do you
not think anyone who loved it, and had to see it die, would think it
greatest kindness to drug it?"

My eyes held hers; I would not lose their glance; she could not take
them away. I saw the fear leap into them, then die away; she was saying
to herself, what could I know?

But I knew. I remembered what the doctor said in Brighton when the
inquest was held on the tiny white body, "that it had been mercifully
drugged before it was drowned."

"I cannot tell," she replied, with a gentle shake of the head. "I only
know that unfortunately the poor people use these kind of cordials too
readily. I should not like to decide whether in a case like this it is
true kindness or not."

"What a pretty child, Mr. Ford; what a pity that it must die!"

Could it be that she who bent with such loving care over this little
stranger, who touched its tiny face with her delicate lips, who held it
cradled in her soft arms, was the same desperate woman who had thrown
her child into the sea?

CHAPTER IX.