“I am the ‘Child of the Public.’  If you ever hear my story, you will say so too.  At the least, I can claim this, that I have a right to help you in your quest as to the way in which the public will help you.  Thus far I am clearly the officer in his suite to whom he has intrusted you.  Are you ready, then, to go on shore?”

Fausta looked around on that forlorn ladies’ saloon, as if it were the last link holding her to her old safe world.

    “Looked upon skylight, lamp, and chain,
    As what she ne’er might see again.”

Then she looked right through me; and if there had been one mean thought in me at that minute, she would have seen the viper.  Then she said, sadly,—­

“I have perfect confidence in you, though people would say we were strangers.  Let us go.”

And we left the boat together.  We declined the invitations of the noisy hackmen, and walked slowly to Broadway.

We stopped at the station-house for that district, and to the attentive chief Fausta herself described those contents of her trunk which she thought would be most easily detected, if offered for sale.  Her mother’s Bible, at which the chief shook his head; Bibles, alas! brought nothing at the shops; a soldier’s medal, such as were given as target prizes by the Montgomery regiment; and a little silver canteen, marked with the device of the same regiment, seemed to him better worthy of note.  Her portfolio was wrought with a cipher, and she explained to him that she was most eager that this should be recovered.  The pocketbook contained more than one hundred dollars, which she described, but he shook his head here, and gave her but little hope of that, if the trunk were once opened.  His chief hope was for this morning.

“And where shall we send to you then, madam?” said he.

I had been proud, as if it were my merit, of the impression Fausta had made upon the officer, in her quiet, simple, ladylike dress and manner.  For myself, I thought that one slip of pretence in my dress or bearing, a scrap of gold or of pinchbeck, would have ruined both of us in our appeal.  But, fortunately, I did not disgrace her, and the man looked at her as if he expected her to say “Fourteenth Street.”  What would she say?

“That depends upon what the time will be.  Mr. Carter will call at noon, and will let you know.”

We bowed, and were gone.  In an instant more she begged my pardon, almost with tears; but I told her that if she also had been a “Child of the Public,” she could not more fitly have spoken to one of her father’s officers.  I begged her to use me as her protector, and not to apologize again.  Then we laid out the plans which we followed out that day.

The officer’s manner had reassured her, and I succeeded in persuading her that it was certain we should have the trunk at noon.  How much better to wait, at least so far, before she entered on any of the enterprises of which she talked so coolly, as of offering herself as a nursery-girl, or as a milliner, to whoever would employ her, if only she could thus secure an honest home till money or till aunt were found.  Once persuaded that we were safe from this Quixotism, I told her that we must go on, as we did on the canal, and first we must take our constitutional walk for two hours.