d his widow at once
left the town.

The people where she lodged believed that she had gone to London, taking
with her her six months old child, and had started to tramp the way on
foot. The woman said that she doubted whether she could ever have got
there. She was an utterly broken woman, with a constant racking cough,
which was like to tear her to pieces, and before she set out her
landlady had urged upon her that the idea of her starting to carry a
heavy child to London was nothing short of madness.

After this all trace of Ella had been lost. Advertisements offering
large rewards appeared in the papers; the books of every workhouse
between Nottingham and London, and indeed of almost every workhouse in
England, were carefully searched to see if there was any record of the
death of a woman with a child about the time of her disappearance. A
similar search was made at all the London hospitals, and at every
institution where she might have crawled to die; but no trace had ever
been found of her.

That she was dead was not doubted; for it was found that at Nottingham
she had once gone to the parish doctor for some medicine for her child.
The physician had taken particular notice of her, had asked her some
questions, and had made a note in his case-book that the mother of the
child he had prescribed for was in an advanced stage of consumption, and
had probably but a few weeks, certainly not more than a few months, to
live.

It was long before the search was given up as hopeless, and many
hundreds of pounds were spent by Captain Bayley before he abandoned all
hope of discovering, if not his daughter, at least her child. During the
year which elapsed before he was forced to acknowledge that it was
hopeless, Captain Bayley had suffered terribly. His self-reproaches were
unceasing, and he aged many years in appearance.

It was three years after this, on the death of his sister, Mrs. Norris,
whose husband had died some years before, that he took Frank into his
house and adopted him as his son, stating, however, to all whom it might
concern, that he did not regard him as standing nearer to him as his
heir than his other nephew, Fred Barkley, but that his property would be
divided between them as they might show themselves worthy of it. It was
three years later still, that, at the death of her father, an old
fellow-officer, his household was increased by the addition of Alice,
who had been left to his guardianship, but who