muff, nor any other
article of her stolen wardrobe. Her friend the good policeman, and
other officers, searched diligently for the dismal den of thieves to
which she had been led; but either they failed to find the exact spot,
or the wretched family had removed. When all search was abandoned,
Bessie was sadly disappointed, not because they had failed to recover
her pretty street dress, as her loss had been at once made up to her by
her kind parents, but that they had failed to find Molly Magee. For
ever since her adventure, Bessie had cherished a humane and romantic
desire to save and befriend that poor little mendicant, whose pity for
her, and vain intercession in her behalf, had touched her heart.

"She is so different from the others, mamma," she would say, "I do
believe she was changed in her cradle by some wicked nurse, if there
are not any such things as malignant fairies. O, I 'm so sorry I can't
believe in fairies any more, they were so convenient; we could account
for so many things that way; but it is n't sensible and religious to
believe in them, so I won't. But, mamma, what was I saying? O, I do
believe that some wicked nurse changed her in her cradle,--took her
from some beautiful mamma and a great fine house to Mrs. Magee's
dreadful homo, and took back a little Magee and put in her place. And
may be her name is n't Molly Magee after all, but Lilly Livingston, or
Isabella Van Rensselaer, or Gertrude Stuyvesant, and--"

"Stop, stop, my child! You are going on in your old romantic way. You
must not let your imagination gallop off with you in that manner. Take
care lest it carry you into the basement of a tenement-house again,"
Mrs. Raeburn would say. Then Bessie would blush and be silent; but she
could not help thinking of poor little Molly Magee; and she so
constantly looked for her on the street that it was hardly a pleasure
to her papa and mamma to walk or drive with her. But the winter went
by without her catching sight of the beggar-girl who had obtained so
strong a hold on her sympathies.

But one sunny day in the early spring her generous, faithful desire was
granted. She had been driving with her papa in the Park, and for a
little change and exercise they had left the carriage and were walking
beside one of the ponds, watching the swans, when all at once Bessie
exclaimed, "O papa, there's Molly Magee!" And surely, right before
them stood the beggar-girl! her face paler, thinner, and s