," I says. "You'll see a good deal of
that child before you've done with it. Babies ain't the sort of things
as gets lost easily. It's only on the stage that folks ever have any
particular use for other people's children. I've known some bad
characters in my time, but I'd have trusted the worst of 'em with a wagon-
load of other people's kids. Don't you flatter yourself you're going to
lose it! Whoever's got it, you take it from me, his idea is to do the
honest thing, and never rest till he's succeeded in returning it to the
rightful owner."

Well, my talking like that cheered him, and when we reached Birmingham he
was easier. We tackled the station-master, and he tackled all the
porters who could have been about the platform when the 5.13 came in. All
of 'em agreed that no gent got out of that train carrying a hamper. The
station-master was a family man himself, and when we explained the case
to him he sympathised and telegraphed to Banbury. The booking-clerk at
Banbury remembered only three gents booking by that particular train. One
had been Mr. Jessop, the corn-chandler; the second was a stranger, who
had booked to Wolverhampton; and the third had been young Milberry
himself. The business began to look hopeless, when one of Smith's
newsboys, who was hanging around, struck in:

"I see an old lady," says he, "hovering about outside the station, and a-
hailing cabs, and she had a hamper with her as was as like that one there
as two peas."

I thought young Milberry would have fallen upon the boy's neck and kissed
him. With the boy to help us, we started among the cabmen. Old ladies
with dog-baskets ain't so difficult to trace. She had gone to a small
second-rate hotel in the Aston Road. I heard all particulars from the
chambermaid, and the old girl seems to have had as bad a time in her way
as my gent had in his. They couldn't get the hamper into the cab, it had
to go on the top. The old lady was very worried, as it was raining at
the time, and she made the cabman cover it with his apron. Getting it
off the cab they dropped the whole thing in the road; that woke the child
up, and it began to cry.

"Good Lord, Ma'am! what is it?" asks the chambermaid, "a baby?"

"Yes, my dear, it's my baby," answers the old lady, who seems to have
been a cheerful sort of old soul--leastways, she was cheerful up to then.
"Poor dear, I hope they haven't hurt him."

The old lady had ordered a room with a fire in it.