Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/201

Rh "Well, I had but half an hour, so I thought it was no use chasin' this unfortunate young creature through all the twistings and turnings of the back slums of Slopperton; so after a few minutes' consideration, I walked straight to the station. Hang me if I wasn't too late for the train again. I don't know how it was, but I couldn't keep my mind off the young woman, nor keep myself from wonderin' what she was agoin' to do with herself, and what she was agoin' to do with that 'ere baby. So I walks back agen down by the water, and as I'd a good hour and a half to spare, I walks a good way, thinking of the young man, and the cut on his forehead. It was nigh upon dark by this time, and foggy into the bargain. Maybe I'd gone a mile or more, when I comes up to a barge what lay at anchor quite solitary. It was a collier, and there was a chap on board, sittin' in the stern, smokin', and lookin' at the water. There was no one else in sight but him and me; and no sooner does he spy me comin' along the bank than he sings out,

Hulloa! Have you met a young woman down that way?'

"His words struck me all of a heap somehow, comin' so near upon what I was a-thinkin' of myself. I shook my head; and he said,

There's been some unfort'nate young girl down here tryin' to dround her baby. I see the little chap in the water, and fished him out with my boat-hook. I'd seen the girl hangin' about here, just as it was a-gettin' dark, and then I heard the splash when she threw the child in; but the fog was too thick for me to see anything ashore by that time.'

"The barge was just alongside the bank, and I stepped on board. Not bein' so fortunate as to have a voice, you know, it comes awkward with strangers, and I was rather put to it to get on with the young man. And didn't he sing out loud when he came to understand I was dumb; he couldn't have spoke in a higher key if I'd been a forriner.

"He told me he should take the baby round to the Union; all he hoped he said, was, that the mother wasn't a-goin' to do anything bad with herself.

"I hoped not too; but I remembered that look of hers when she stood at the window staring out at the river, and I didn't feel very easy in my mind about her.

"I took the poor little wet thing up in my arms. The young man had wrapped it in an old jacket, and it was a-cryin' piteous, and lookin', on, so scared and miserable.

"Well, it may seem a queer whim, but I'm rather soft-hearted on the subject of babies, and often had a thought that I should like to try the power of cultivation in the way of business, and bring a child up from the very cradle to the police detective line, to see whether I couldn't make that 'ere child a ornament to the