ke a good woman, you just move off from here and
go home. If I leave you here by yourself a bit, will you promise me to
go straight home? I mustn't find you here when I come back on this beat,
d' ye understand?" Liz nodded. "That's right!" he resumed, cheerily.
"I'll give you just ten minutes; you just go straight home."

And with a "Good-night," uttered in accents meant to be comforting, he
turned away and paced on, his measured tread echoing on the silence at
first loudly, then fainter and fainter, till it altogether died away, as
his bulky figure disappeared in the distance. Left to herself, Liz rose
from her crouching posture; rocking the dead child in her arms, she
smiled.

"Go straight home!" she murmured, half aloud. "Home, sweet home! Yes,
baby; yes, my darling, we will go home together!"

And creeping cautiously along in the shadows, she reached a flight of
the broad stone steps leading down to the river. She descended them, one
by one; the black water lapped against them heavily, heavily; the tide
was full up. She paused; a sonorous, deep-toned iron voice rang through
the air with reverberating, solemn melody. It was the great bell of St.
Paul's tolling midnight--the Old Year was dead.

"Straight home!" she repeated, with a beautiful, expectant look in her
wild, weary eyes. "My little darling! Yes, we are both tired; we will go
home! Home, sweet home! We will go!"

Kissing the cold face of the baby corpse she held, she threw herself
forward; there followed a sullen, deep splash--a slight struggle--and
all was over! The water lapped against the steps heavily, heavily, as
before; the policeman passed once more, and saw to his satisfaction that
the coast was clear; through the dark veil of the sky one star looked
out and twinkled for a brief instant, then disappeared again. A clash
and clamour of bells startled the brooding night, here and there a
window was opened, and figures appeared in balconies to listen. They
were ringing in the New Year--the festival of hope, the birthday of the
world! But what were New Years to her, who, with white, upturned face,
and arms that embraced an infant in the tenacious grip of death, went
drifting, drifting solemnly down the dark river, unseen, unpitied by all
those who awoke to new hopes and aspirations on that first morning
of another life-probation! Liz had gone; gone to make her peace with
God--perhaps through the aid of her "hired" baby, the little sinless
soul she ha