o much for her strength, and an utter prostration of mind and body was
the consequence. There was no fever nor sign of any active disease--only
weakness, Nature's enforced quietude, that life and reason might be
saved.

CHAPTER XVII.

_THE_ police were at fault. They found Pinky Swett, but were not able to
find the baby. Careful as they were in their surveillance, she managed
to keep them on the wrong track and to baffle every effort to discover
what had been done with the child.

In this uncertainty months went by. Edith came up slowly from her
prostrate condition, paler, sadder and quieter, living in a kind of
waking dream. Her father tried to hold her back from her mission work
among the poor, but she said, "I must go, father; I will die if I do
not."

And so her life lost itself in charities. Now and then her mother
made an effort to draw her into society. She had not yet given up her
ambition, nor her hope of one day seeing her daughter take social rank
among the highest, or what she esteemed the highest. But her power over
Edith was entirely gone. She might as well have set herself to turn
the wind from its course as to influence her in anything. It was all in
vain. Edith had dropped out of society, and did not mean to go back. She
had no heart for anything outside of her home, except the Christian work
to which she had laid her hands.

The restless, watchful, suspicious manner exhibited for a long time by
Mrs. Dinneford, and particularly noticed by Edith, gradually wore off.
She grew externally more like her old self, but with something new in
the expression of her face when in repose, that gave a chill to the
heart of Edith whenever she saw its mysterious record, that seemed in
her eyes only an imperfect effort to conceal some guilty secret.

Thus the mother and daughter, though in daily personal contact, stood
far apart--were internally as distant from each other as the antipodes.

As for Mr. Dinneford, what he had seen and heard on his first visit to
Briar street had aroused him to a new and deeper sense of his duty as
a citizen. Against all the reluctance and protests of his natural
feelings, he had compelled himself to stand face to face with the
appalling degradation and crime that festered and rioted in that almost
Heaven-deserted region. He had heard and read much about its evil
condition; but when, under the protection of a policeman, he went from
house to house, from den to den, throug