“Well, I am disappointed,” pouted Tavia, “and I don’t want any more mock trials.”

“We must hurry, your father will soon be here.  And how anxious I am to go to that place.  What if the man has deceived the police as he did poor Mr. Burlock?”

“No danger.  He is caught in his own trap now, and his only hope is from good behavior—­they make it lighter for him as he makes it easier to clear up the case.  I heard pop talking to the folks last night about it.”

This was the day after the identification of Andrew Anderson by Dorothy in the Police Court.  The man had disguised his appearance by taking off his beard, but there were other marks, and the girl could not be shaken in her positive identification.

The man had denied his guilt at first, but finally broke down when confronted with the evidence against him and admitted he had the Burlock child in hiding, but she was now in charge of some woman.  Dorothy was to go for her to-day.

Mr. Travers, though having many important affairs to attend to, was on time, and he agreed to take Dorothy and Tavia with him to find Nellie.

“Keep close to me,” he told the girls, making their way through dirty and uncertain streets.  “This is a rough part of town.”

House after house he stopped at, leaving the girls in each instance waiting anxiously to be told to follow.  But the places were so much alike in their squalor the search was becoming more and more tiresome.

“Maybe he gave the wrong address,” ventured Tavia, discouraged and dissatisfied with the many mistakes.

“No, but these people change homes so often,” explained her father.  “Here, this looks—­wait a minute!”

Down the steps of a dark basement Squire Travers hurried.  The girls looked after him—­that place was not dirty, merely poor and bare.

Presently he called to them: 

“Come in, girls,” and Dorothy felt she could hardly move—­she was so anxious and expectant.

A woman, with a kind face, greeted them sadly, but with that unmistakable air of one whom poverty cannot drag down from self-respect.

“Yes, I have a child with me,” she answered nervously, “but I cannot allow you to see her.”

Then Squire Travers produced his credentials.

“You need not fear us,” he told her kindly.  “We have the best of news for little Nellie Burlock, and we are only too anxious to make her acquainted with it.”

“But we have been disappointed so often,” objected the woman, “and that man Anderson—­”

“You need not think of him now,” said Squire Travers.  “We have just left him in the hands of the sheriff.  This little girl,” placing his hand on Dorothy, “has brought it all about.  She showed the child’s father how to die happily—­made it possible for him to see the hope beyond, and then she and her good father have worked untiringly to find the child.  Cannot we see her now?”