wn-stairs, have
to say. If you can supply me with writing-materials, I will take their
declarations separately on the spot, in your presence, and in the
presence of the policeman who is watching the house. To-morrow I will
send copies of those declarations, accompanied by a full statement of the
case, to Mr. and Mrs. Bayne in Canada (both of whom know me well as the
late Mr. Forley's legal adviser); and I will suspend all proceedings, on
my part, until I hear from them, or from their solicitor in London. In
the present posture of affairs this is all I can safely do."

We could do no less than agree with him, and thank him for his frank and
honest manner of meeting us. It was arranged that I should send over the
writing-materials from my lodgings; and, to my unutterable joy and
relief, it was also readily acknowledged that the poor little orphan boy
could find no fitter refuge than my old arms were longing to offer him,
and no safer protection for the night than my roof could give. Trottle
hastened away up-stairs, as actively as if he had been a young man, to
fetch the child down.

And he brought him down to me without another moment of delay, and I went
on my knees before the poor little Mite, and embraced him, and asked him
if he would go with me to where I lived? He held me away for a moment,
and his wan, shrewd little eyes looked sharp at me. Then he clung close
to me all at once, and said:

"I'm a-going along with you, I am--and so I tell you!"

For inspiring the poor neglected child with this trust in my old self, I
thanked Heaven, then, with all my heart and soul, and I thank it now!

I bundled the poor darling up in my own cloak, and I carried him in my
own arms across the road. Peggy was lost in speechless amazement to
behold me trudging out of breath up-stairs, with a strange pair of poor
little legs under my arm; but, she began to cry over the child the moment
she saw him, like a sensible woman as she always was, and she still cried
her eyes out over him in a comfortable manner, when he at last lay fast
asleep, tucked up by my hands in Trottle's bed.

"And Trottle, bless you, my dear man," said I, kissing his hand, as he
looked on: "the forlorn baby came to this refuge through you, and he will
help you on your way to Heaven."

Trottle answered that I was his dear mistress, and immediately went and
put his head out at an open window on the landing, and looked into the
back street for a quarter of