will call at the mission again."

CHAPTER XV.

_WHEN_ Mr. Dinneford and the policeman sent by the mayor at his
solicitation visited Grubb's court, the baby was not to be found. The
room in which it had been seen by Mr. Paulding was vacant. Such a room
as it was!--low and narrow, with bare, blackened walls, the single
window having scarcely two whole panes of glass, the air loaded with the
foulness that exhaled from the filth-covered floor, the only furniture a
rough box and a dirty old straw bed lying in a corner.

As Mr. Dinneford stood at the door of this room and inhaled its fetid
air, he grew sick, almost faint. Stepping back, with a shocked and
disgusted look on his face, he said to the policeman,

"There must be a mistake. This cannot be the room."

Two or three children and a coarse, half-clothed woman, seeing a
gentleman going into the house accompanied by a policeman, had followed
them closely up stairs.

"Who lives in this room?" asked the policeman, addressing the woman.

"Don't know as anybody lives there now," she replied, with evident
evasion.

"Who did live here?" demanded the policeman.

"Oh, lots!" returned the woman, curtly.

"I want to know who lived here last," said the policeman, a little
sternly.

"Can't say--never keep the run of 'em," answered the woman, with more
indifference than she felt. "Goin' and comin' all the while. Maybe it
was Poll Davis."

"Had she a baby?"

The woman gave a vulgar laugh as she replied: "I rather think not."

"It was Moll Fling," said one of the children, "and she had a baby."

"When was she here last?" inquired the policeman.

The woman, unseen by the latter, raised her fist and threatened the
child, who did not seem to be in the least afraid of her, for she
answered promptly:

"She went away about an hour ago."

"And took the baby?"

"Yes. You see Mr. Paulding was here asking about the baby, and she got
scared."

"Why should that scare her?"

"I don't know, only it isn't her baby."

"How do you know that?"

"'Cause it isn't--I know it isn't. She's paid to take care of it."

"Who by?"

"Pinky Swett."

"Who's Pinky Swett?"

"Don't you know Pinky Swett?" and the child seemed half surprised.

"Where does Pinky Swett live?" asked the policeman.

"She did live next door for a while, but I don't know where she's gone."

Nothing beyond this could be ascertained. But having learned the names
of the women who had possession o