iet it and had been lulled to sleep with it herself.

Gavin did not wake them. He went to the bed where the four little ones
slept, and kissed them, each in his turn, then came back and kissed
his wife and baby.

May nestled close to him as he bent over her and gave her, too, a
little hug.

"Where are you going, papa?" she asked.

He turned around at the door and cast a look back at the quiet room,
irresolute. Then he went back once more to kiss his sleeping wife and
baby softly.

But however softly, it woke the mother. She saw him making for the
door, and asked him where he meant to go so late.

"Out, just a little while," he said, and his voice was husky. He
turned his head away.

A woman's instinct made her arise hastily and go to him.

"Don't go," she said; "please don't go away."

As he still moved toward the door, she put her arm about his neck and
drew his head toward her.

She strove with him anxiously, frightened, she hardly knew herself by
what. The lamplight fell upon something shining which he held behind
his back. The room rang with the shot, and the baby awoke crying, to
see its father slip from mamma's arms to the floor, dead.

For John Gavin, alive, there was no place. At least he did not find
it; for which, let it be said and done with, he was to blame. Dead,
society will find one for him. And for the one misfit got off the list
there are seven whom not employment bureau nor woodyard nor charity
register can be made to reach. Social economy the thing is called;
which makes the eighth misfit.

A HEATHEN BABY

A stack of mail comes to Police Headquarters every morning from the
precincts by special department carrier. It includes the reports for
the last twenty-four hours of stolen and recovered goods, complaints,
and the thousand and one things the official mail-bag contains from
day to day. It is all routine, and everything has its own pigeonhole
into which it drops and is forgotten until some raking up in the
department turns up the old blotters and the old things once more. But
at last the mail-bag contained something that was altogether out of
the usual run, to wit, a Chinese baby.

Pickaninnies have come in it before this, lots of them, black and
shiny, and one pappoose from a West Side wigwam; but a Chinese baby
never.

Sergeant Jack was so astonished that it took his breath away. When he
recovered he spoke learnedly about its clothes as evidence of its
heathen origin. N