She went to the top of the kitchen stairs and called out:  “Amy, is Master Cyril down there?”

“Master Cyril?  No, mum.  But he was in the parlour a bit ago, after the first and second lot had gone.  I told him to go upstairs and be a good boy.”

Not for a few moments did the suspicion enter the minds of Samuel and Constance that Cyril might be missing, that the house might not contain Cyril.  But having once entered, the suspicion became a certainty.  Amy, cross-examined, burst into sudden tears, admitting that the side-door might have been open when, having sped ’the second lot,’ she criminally left Cyril alone in the parlour in order to descend for an instant to her kitchen.  Dusk was gathering.  Amy saw the defenceless innocent wandering about all night in the deserted streets of a great city.  A similar vision with precise details of canals, tramcar-wheels, and cellar-flaps, disturbed Constance.  Samuel said that anyhow he could not have got far, that some one was bound to remark and recognize him, and restore him.  “Yes, of course,” thought sensible Constance.  “But supposing—­”

They all three searched the entire house again.  Then, in the drawing-room (which was in a sad condition of anticlimax) Amy exclaimed: 

“Eh, master!  There’s town-crier crossing the Square.  Hadn’t ye better have him cried?”

“Run out and stop him,” Constance commanded.

And Amy flew.

Samuel and the aged town-crier parleyed at the side door, the women in the background.

“I canna’ cry him without my bell,” drawled the crier, stroking his shabby uniform.  “My bell’s at wum (home).  I mun go and fetch my bell.  Yo’ write it down on a bit o’ paper for me so as I can read it, and I’ll foot off for my bell.  Folk wouldna’ listen to me if I hadna’ gotten my bell.”

Thus was Cyril cried.

“Amy,” said Constance, when she and the girl were alone, “there’s no use in you standing blubbering there.  Get to work and clear up that drawing-room, do!  The child is sure to be found soon.  Your master’s gone out, too.”

Brave words!  Constance aided in the drawing-room and kitchen.  Theirs was the woman’s lot in a great crisis.  Plates have always to be washed.

Very shortly afterwards, Samuel Povey came into the kitchen by the underground passage which led past the two cellars to the yard and to Brougham Street.  He was carrying in his arms an obscene black mass.  This mass was Cyril, once white.

Constance screamed.  She was at liberty to give way to her feelings, because Amy happened to be upstairs.

“Stand away!” cried Mr. Povey.  “He isn’t fit to touch.”

And Mr. Povey made as if to pass directly onward, ignoring the mother.

“Wherever did you find him?”

“I found him in the far cellar,” said Mr. Povey, compelled to stop, after all.  “He was down there with me yesterday, and it just occurred to me that he might have gone there again.”