id so, telling as briefly as he could about
the basement and Hansche and the baby that was not his, a silver
quarter found its way mysteriously into little Abe's fist, to the
utter upsetting of all that "kid's" notions of policemen and their
functions. When the pedler had done, the officer directed him to
Police Headquarters where they would take the baby, he need have no
fear of that.

"Better leave this one there, too," was his parting counsel. Little
Abe did not understand, but he took a firmer grip on his papa's hand,
and never let go all the way up the three long flights of stairs to
the police nursery where the child at last found peace and a bottle.
But when the matron tried to coax him to stay also, he screamed and
carried on so that they were glad to let him go lest he wake everybody
in the building. Though proverbially Police Headquarters never sleeps,
yet it does not like to be disturbed in its midnight nap, as it were.
It is human with the rest of us, that is how.

Down in the marble-tiled hall little Abe and his father stopped
irresolute. Outside it was dark and windy; the snow, that had ceased
falling in the evening, was swept through the streets on the northern
blast. They had nowhere to go. The doorman was called downstairs just
then to the telegraph office. When he came up again he found father
and son curled up on the big mat by the register, sound asleep. It was
against the regulations entirely, and he was going to wake them up
and put them out, when he happened to glance through the glass doors
at the storm without, and remembered that it was Christmas Eve. With a
growl he let them sleep, trusting to luck that the inspector wouldn't
come out. The doorman, too, was human.

So it came about that the newspaper boys who ran with messages to the
reporters' offices across the street, found them there and held a
meeting over them. Rudie, the smartest of them, declared that his
"fingers just itched for that sheeny's whiskers," but the others paid
little attention to him. Even reporters' messengers are not so bad as
they like to have others believe them, sometimes. The year before, in
their rough sport in the alley, the boys had upset old Mary, so that
she fell and broke her arm. That finished old Mary's scrubbing, for
the break never healed. Ever since this, bloodthirsty Rudie had been
stealing down Mulberry Street to the old woman's attic on pay-day and
sharing his meagre wages with her, paying, beside,