ing, in which the baby,
adopted by him, should turn out to be somebody's stolen offspring. He
lifted the little image that had suggested these fancies, carefully laid
it on his table, went to bed, and presently forgot it all in slumber.

In the morning his good-humor and interest in it revived to the extent
of writing on a slip of paper, "Good-morning! Thank you--I've slept very
well," putting the slip in the doll's jointed arms, and leaving it in a
sitting posture outside his door when he left his room. When he returned
late at night it was gone.

But it so chanced that, a few days later, owing to press of work on the
"Informer," he was obliged to forego his usual Sunday holiday out of
town, and that morning found him, while the bells were ringing for
church, in his room with a pile of manuscript and proof before him.
For these were troublous days in San Francisco; the great Vigilance
Committee of '56 was in session, and the offices of the daily papers
were thronged with eager seekers of news. Such affairs, indeed, were not
in the functions of the assistant editor, nor exactly to his taste; he
was neither a partisan of the so-called Law and Order Party, nor yet
an enthusiastic admirer of the citizen Revolutionists known as the
Vigilance Committee, both extremes being incompatible with his habits of
thought. Consequently he was not displeased at this opportunity of doing
his work away from the office and the "heady talk" of controversy.

He worked on until the bells ceased and a more than Sabbath stillness
fell upon the streets. So quiet was it that once or twice the
conversation of passing pedestrians floated up and into his window, as
of voices at his elbow.

Presently he heard the sound of a child's voice singing in subdued tone,
as if fearful of being overheard. This time he laid aside his pen--it
certainly was no delusion! The sound did not come from the open
window, but from some space on a level with his room. Yet there was no
contiguous building as high.

He rose and tried to open his door softly, but it creaked, and the
singing instantly ceased. There was nothing before him but the bare,
empty hall, with its lathed and plastered partitions, and the two
smaller rooms, unfinished like his own, on either side of him. Their
doors were shut; the one at his right hand was locked, the other yielded
to his touch.

For the first moment he saw only the bare walls of the apparently empty
room. But a second glance s