"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 paid on nothing a week, and something to put in the mouth besides." "Gone? Are you mad? Woman, think what you're saying. Gone where?" "How do I know where? Mad, indeed! I'll not say but other folk look a mort madder nor ever I looked." The young woman took her by the shoulder. "Don't say that--don't say you don't know where they're gone. They've got my child, I tell you; my poor little Paul.