ush, you're disturbing the ladies
and gentlemen."

She was relieved when the whole carriage load turned out at the next
station: she and Maud were left alone, and she had time to collect her
thoughts.

Her triumph was complete! She had paid Pattie out thoroughly and she
was satisfied. The opportunity for her vengeance had come to her and
she had seized it without fear and without regret. How clever it was
of her to have thought of that fiction about her sister and the new
baby! It would do for Jim too, admirably, and he would never find out.
She doubted if he even knew where in the outskirts of Old Keston her
sister lived. He might even not know her married name! He would accept
the story as she gave it, especially now that he was beginning to
drink again. Well! he could drink as much as he liked, so long as he
brought her her money and Harry's money regularly!

In a day or two she would take the child back to Old Keston,
ostensibly to see its mother and the new baby, but in reality she
would take it in the dark to its own gate, and leave it to make its
own presence known.

In the meantime Pattie would be dismissed without a character, with
a multitude of blame upon her head, if indeed she escaped so easily.
They might think Pattie had stolen the child, and clap her into prison
till she was found!

That would be vengeance indeed!

CHAPTER XX.

REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.

"It is worse than death," sobbed Mrs. Brougham, and they all felt that
it was so.

They were gathered at home at last, in the small hours of the night,
for there was nothing more that they could do till morning came to
wake the world again--that wide desolate world of houses and roads, of
byways and slums; that world in which, _somewhere_, was their little
Maud.

Pale, wide-eyed and silent, they all tried to eat the supper which
Pattie, pale and wide-eyed too, set before them, for they thought of
the day that would soon dawn, when they would need their strength to
begin the search again, and though it seemed horrible to be seeking
rest in their comfortable beds while their little sister's fate was
unsolved, yet for that same reason, slowly and lingeringly they all
said good-night and crept upstairs.

For in vain they had searched for little Maud all the evening long.
Police, neighbours, friends, had all helped, but no trace, not even
the faintest clue, had come to light. Porters, booking-clerks, railway
officials, cabmen, had all be