Week after week and month after month now went on without a single, occurrence that gave to Edith any new light.  Mrs. Dinneford wrought with her accomplice so effectually that she kept her wholly out of the way.  Often, in going and returning from the mission-school, Edith would linger about the neighborhood where she had once met her mother, hoping to see her come out of some one of the houses there, for she had got it into her mind that the woman called Mrs. Gray lived somewhere in this locality.

One day, in questioning a child who had come to the sewing-school as to her home and how she lived, the little girl said something about a baby that her mother said she knew must have been stolen.

“How old is the baby?” asked Edith, hardly able to keep the tremor out of her voice.

“It’s a little thing,” answered the child.  “I don’t know how old it is; maybe it’s six months old, or maybe it’s a year.  It can sit upon the floor.”

“Why does your mother think it has been stolen?”

“Because two bad girls have got it, and they pay a woman to take care of it.  It doesn’t belong to them, she knows.  Mother says it would be a good thing if it died.”

“Why does she say that?”

“Oh she always talks that way about babies—­says she’s glad when they die.”

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

“It’s a boy baby,” answered the child.

“Does the woman take good care of it?”

“Oh dear, no!  She lets it sit on the floor ’most all the time, and it cries so that I often go up and nurse it.  The woman lives in the room over ours.”

“Where do you live?”

“In Grubb’s court.”

“Will you show me the way there after school is over?”

The child looked up into Edith’s face with an expression of surprise and doubt.  Edith repeated her question.

“I guess you’d better not go,” was answered, in a voice that meant all the words expressed.

“Why not?”

“It isn’t a good place.”

“But you live there?”

“Yes, but nobody’s going to trouble me.”

“Nor me,” said Edith.

“Oh, but you don’t know what kind of a place it is, nor what dreadful people live there.”

“I could get a policeman to go with me, couldn’t I?”

“Yes, maybe you could, or Mr. Paulding, the missionary.  He goes about everywhere.”

“Where can I find Mr. Paulding?”

“At the mission in Briar street.”

“You’ll show me the way there after school?”

“Oh yes; it isn’t a nice place for you to go, but I guess nobody’ll trouble you.”