hree years old when she was lost from her Essex
Street home, in that neighborhood where once the police commissioners
thought seriously of having the children tagged with name and street
number, to save trotting them back and forth between police station
and Headquarters. She had gone from the tenement to the corner where
her father kept a stand, to beg a penny, and nothing more was known of
her. Weeks after, a neighbor identified one of her little frocks as
the match of one worn by a child she had seen dragged off by a
rough-looking man. But though Max Lubinsky, the pedler, and Yette's
mother camped on the steps of Police Headquarters early and late,
anxiously questioning every one who went in and out about their lost
child, no other word was heard of her. By and by it came to be an old
story, and the two were looked upon as among the fixtures of the
place. Mulberry Street has other such.

They were poor and friendless in a strange land, the very language of
which was jargon to them, as theirs was to us, timid in the crush, and
they were shouldered out. It was not inhumanity; at least, it was not
meant to be. It was the way of the city, with every one for himself;
and they accepted it, uncomplaining. So they kept their vigil on the
stone steps, in storm and fair weather, every night taking turns to
watch all who passed. When it was a policeman with a little child, as
it was many times between sunset and sunrise, the one on the watch
would start up the minute they turned the corner, and run to meet
them, eagerly scanning the little face, only to return, disappointed
but not cast down, to the step upon which the other slept, head upon
knees, waiting the summons to wake and watch.

Their mute sorrow appealed to me, then doing night duty in the
newspaper office across the way, and I tried to help them in their
search for the lost Yette. They accepted my help gratefully,
trustfully, but without loud demonstration. Together we searched the
police records, the hospitals, the morgue, and the long register of
the river's dead. She was not there. Having made sure of this, we
turned to the children's asylums. We had a description of Yette sent
to each and every one, with the minutest particulars concerning her
and her disappearance, but no word came back in response. A year
passed, and we were compelled at last to give over the search. It
seemed as if every means of finding out what had become of the child
had been exhausted, a