plain duty was to collect her property and prevent its disturbing the
whole house.

When she reached her friend's room she found that the disturbance had
taken place and was still in progress. The nurse, the doctor, and the
Top Floor Front were gathered about the bed, presumably reassuring their
patient, and upon a pillow thrown into a rocking-chair the Stork had
left Esther's gold-haired brother.

Oh! it was easy, fatally easy, to recognize the answer to her petition!
The noise subsided as Esther noiselessly pattered over to it, and from
an end of its roll of flannel a bright head projected. Esther picked it
up and beat a hasty retreat unobserved by the workers at the bedside.
Down the dark stairs she passed with her burden, and into the
drawing-room again. She snuggled down beside it in her crib and for a
few ecstatic moments held it in her arms. The clock struck four, and, as
Esther quivered and listened still for the descent of the doctor, the
baby raised up its voice again in one prolonged and breathless yell.
Jacob was beside the crib in an instant and had his daughter in his
arms.

"What is it?" he questioned wildly. "Where is it? What hurt thee?" And
then his heart too skipped a beat, for he found that though he had
Esther in his arms he had left her voice in the crib.

"It ain't me," she finally managed to assure him. "It's mine little
brother what I gets out of the Central Park."

Lights, Mrs. Moriarty, explanations, and expostulations followed.

"I tells that Stork," Esther ended, "I tells him I ain't got no families
und no aunties, und I needs a baby, und I has a bed ready. It _is_ mine
baby. Storks is crazy fools!"

But the inexorable John Nolan set out upon his mission of restitution.
Esther, puzzled, heart-broken, argumentative, sped on before, and
reached, not without some skirmishing, the side of the golden-haired
lady, while her father was still struggling with the darkness and his
unaccustomed burden.

And then the miracles began. The lady heard a step upon the stairs and a
great radiance fell upon her. Wonder, incredulity, and joy shone in her
lovely eyes. The doctor's hand was on her wrist. The nurse's admonitions
were in her ears. But she raised herself among her pillows and watched
the turn of the stairs where a shaft of light streamed through the open
door.

Esther's father came out of the darkness, and the lady wrenched her hand
from the doctor and stretched both her arms toward the