igure in the dusky shadows.

"Let her be removed to the Dartford asylum," said the magistrate; "I
will give an order at once."

A voice came from the body of the court. It was Mrs. Drayton's voice,
thick with sobs.

"And if you please, your worship, may me and my husband take care of the
child until the poor young thing is well enough to come for it? We've no
children of our own, sir, and my husband and me, we'd like to have it,
and no one would do no better by it, your worship."

"I think you are a good woman, Mrs. Drayton," said the magistrate. Then,
turning to the clerk, he added: "Let inquiries be made about her, and,
if all prove satisfactory, let the child be given into her care."

"Oh, thank your worship; it do make me cry--"

"Yes, all right--never mind now--we know all about it--come along."

The prisoner recovered consciousness in being removed from the dock; the
constable was taking the child out of her arms. She clung to it with
feverish hands.

"Take me away," she said in a deep whisper, and her eyes wandered to the
door.

"Stop that man!" said the magistrate, pointing to the vague recesses
into which the spectator had disappeared. An officer of the court went
out hastily. Presently returning: "He is gone," said the officer.

"Take me away, take me away!" cried the prisoner in a tense voice.
"Paul, Paul, my own little Paul!" The woman's breath came and went in
gusts, and her child cried from the convulsive pressure to her breast.

"Remove them," said the bench.

There was a faint commotion. Among the people in the court, huddled like
sheep, there was a harsh scraping of feet, and some suppressed
whispering. The stolid faces on the bench turned and smiled slightly in
the yellow gleam of the gas that burned in front of them. Then the
momentary bustle ended, the woman and child were gone, and the calm
monotony of the court was resumed.

Six months later a handsome woman, still little more than a girl, yet
with eyes of suffering, stepped up to the door of a house in Pimlico and
knocked timidly.

"I wish to see Mrs. Drayton," she said, when the door was opened by an
elderly person.

"Bless you, they're gone, Mrs. Drayton and her Husband."

"Gone!" said the young woman, "gone! What do you mean?"

"Why, gone--removed--shifted."

"Removed--shifted?" The idea seemed to struggle its slow way into her
brain.

"In course--what else, when the big hotel fails and he loses his job?
Rents can't be