Presently I discovered Storm’s nurse seated on a bench near by in eager converse with a male personage of her own nationality.  The baby, who was safely strapped in the carriage at the roadside, was pleasantly occupied in venting her destructive instincts upon a linen edition of “Mother Goose.”  As I arose to get a nearer view of the child, I saw a slender, simply dressed lady, with a beautiful but careworn face, evidently approaching with the same intention.  At the sight of me she suddenly paused; a look of recognition seemed to be vaguely struggling in her features,—­she turned around, and walked rapidly away.  The thought immediately flashed through me that it was the same face I had seen under the gas-lamp on the evening when the child was found.  Moreover, the type, although not glaringly Norse, corresponded in its general outline to Storm’s description.  Fearing to excite her suspicion, I forced my face into the most neutral expression, stooped down to converse with the baby, and then sauntered off with a leisurely air toward “Ward’s Indian Hunter.”  I had no doubt that if the lady were the child’s mother, she would soon reappear; and I need not add that my expectations proved correct.  After having waited some fifteen minutes, I saw her returning with swift, wary steps and watchful eyes, like some lithe wild thing that scents danger in the air.  As she came up to the nurse, she dropped down into the seat with a fine affectation of weariness, and began to chat with an attempt at indifference which was truly pathetic.  Her eyes seemed all the while to be devouring the child with a wild, hungry tenderness.  Suddenly she pounced upon it, hugged it tightly in her arms, and quite forgetting her role, strove no more to smother her sobs.  The nurse was greatly alarmed; I heard her expostulating, but could not distinguish the words.  The child cried.  Suddenly the lady rose, explained briefly, as I afterward heard, that she had herself lately lost a child, and hurried away.  At a safe distance I followed her, and succeeded in tracking her nearly a mile down Broadway, where she vanished into what appeared to be a genteel dressmaking establishment.  By the aid of a friend of mine, a dealer in furnishing goods, whom I thought it prudent to take into my confidence, I ascertained that she called herself Mrs. Helm (an ineffectual disguise of the Norwegian Hjelm), that she was a widow of quiet demeanor and most exemplary habits, and that she had worked as a seamstress in the establishment during the past four months.  My friend elicited these important facts under the pretence of wishing to employ her himself in the shirtmaking department of his own business.

Having through the same agency obtained the street and number of her boarding-place, I visited her landlady, who dispelled my last doubts, and moreover, informed me (perhaps under the impression that I was a possible suitor) that Mrs. Helm was as fine a lady as ever trod God’s earth, and a fit wife for any man.  The same evening I conveyed to Storm the result of my investigations.