nsequences the bare thought of
which filled her with terror.

It was only a few weeks after this that Mrs. Dinneford, while looking
over a morning paper, saw in the court record the name of Pinky
Swett. This girl had been tried for robbing a man of his pocket-book,
containing five hundred dollars, found guilty, and sentenced to prison
for a term of two years.

"Good again!" exclaimed Mrs. Dinneford, with satisfaction. "The wheel
turns."

After that she gradually rose above the doubts and dread of exposure
that haunted her continually, and set herself to work to draw her
daughter back again into society. But she found her influence over Edith
entirely gone. Indeed, Edith stood so far away from her that she seemed
more like a stranger than a child.

Two or three times had Pinky Swett gone to the mission sewing-school in
order to get a sight of Edith. Her purpose was to follow her home, and
so find out her name and were she lived. With this knowledge in her
possession, she meant to visit Mrs. Bray, and by a sudden or casual
mention by name of Edith as the child's mother throw her off her guard,
and lead her to betray the fact if it were really so. But Edith was sick
at home, and did not go to the school. After a few weeks the little girl
who was to identify Edith as the person who had shown so much interest
in the baby was taken away from Grubb's court by her mother, and nobody
could tell where to find her. So, Pinky had to abandon her efforts in
this direction, and Edith, when she was strong enough to go back to
the sewing-school, missed the child, from whom she was hoping to hear
something that might give a clue to where the poor waif had been taken.

Up to the time of her arrest and imprisonment, Pinky had faithfully paid
the child's board, and looked in now and then upon the woman who had it
in charge, to see that it was properly cared for. How marvelously the
baby had improved in these two or three months! The shrunken limb's were
rounded into beautiful symmetry, and the pinched face looked full and
rosy. The large brown eyes, in which you once saw only fear or a mystery
of suffering, were full of a happy light, and the voice rang out often
in merry child-laughter. The baby had learned to walk, and was daily
growing more and more lovable.

But after Pinky's imprisonment there was a change. The woman--Mrs. Burke
by name--in whose care the child had been placed could not afford to
keep him for nothing. The two do