"

"Oh, oh, oh!" said the girl, but she wrapped the shawl about the child
and lifted it up sleeping.

"Now, you down't!" said the man, putting himself on guard before the
door. "That child is worth 'undrids of pounds to me, and----"

"Stand back, you brute!" said John, and with the girl and her burden he
passed out of the house.

The front door stood open and the neighbourhood had been raised. Trollopy
women in their under-petticoats and with their hair hanging about their
necks were gathered at the end of the court. Aggie was crying again, and
John pushed through the crowd without speaking.

They went back by Broad Sanctuary, where a solitary policeman was pacing
to and fro on the echoing pavement. Big Ben was chiming the half-hour
after midnight. The child coughed like a sheep constantly, and Aggie kept
saying, "Oh, oh, oh!"

Mrs. Pincher, in her widow's cap and white apron, was waiting up for
them, and John committed the child to her keeping. Then he said to Aggie,
who was turning away, "My poor child, you have suffered deeply, but if
you will leave this man I will help you to begin life again, and if you
want money I will find it."

"Well, he _is_ a Father and no mistake!" said Mrs. Pincher; but the girl
only answered in a hopeless voice, "I don't want no money, and I don't
want to begin life again."

As she crossed the court to her room in the tenement house they heard her
"Oh, oh, oh!"

* * * * *

Before going to bed that night John Storm wrote to Glory:

"Hurrah! Have got poor Polly's baby, so you may set your heart at ease
about it. All the days of my life I have been thought to be a dreamer,
but it is surprising what a man can do when he sets to work for somebody
else! Your former landlady turns out to be the wife of my 'organ man,'
and it was pitiful to see the dear old simpleton's devotion to his bogus
little baggage. I have lost him, of course, but that was unavoidable.

"It was by help of another victim that I traced the child at last. She is
a ballet girl of some sort, and it was as much as I could stand to see
the poor young thing carrying Polly's baby, her own being dead and buried
without a word said to her. Short of the grace of God she will go to the
bad now. Oh, when will the world see that in dealing with the starved
hearts of these poor fallen creatures God Almighty knows best how to do
his own business? Keep the child with the mother, foster the materna