Kit laughed, replaced the pipe in her mouth, and moved aside. The ragpicker passed out to the alley with Owlet in her arms, the child’s head over the woman’s shoulder. The crone would have been made anxious by the child’s long swoon, but that she felt the gentle motion of the little one’s lungs against her own breast. She walked down to the end of the alley, and turned the corner into a crowded street leading down to the East River. The fresh night breeze from the sea began to revive the fainting child, who moved and sighed. “There, there, dearie, it’s all right. Don’t be afeared, my pretty little Lady Fine Feathers. It’s only me toting of you home to your dear Lady. Yes, dearie,” whispered the thief. The exhausted child, scarcely cognizant of herself—not at all of her surroundings—heaved a deep sigh of weariness, and subsided into quietness. The ragpicker walked on, watching her opportunity to drop and leave the child when she could feel sure of doing so without being observed. She met and passed, jostled and was jostled by many foot passengers on the sidewalks, and she saw and was seen by several policemen, any one of whom would have stopped and “run her in” had he had the slightest suspicion of the crime she was committing. But the sight of a ragged woman with a ragged child in her arms was a sight too common to draw remark, much less to excite suspicion. The ragpicker, however, soon left the more crowded and busier street, and turned into a less frequented and quieter one. She knew all the mazes in the labyrinth of that quarter, and she turned and wound among them like the crawling serpent that might have been her type. At length she found what she had been seeking from the time she had set out on her walk with the child in her arms—a narrow, quiet street that seemed at this hour to be deserted of all pedestrian life. Lights gleamed from the windows of the tall tenements on either side; but no one seemed to be abroad. Here she looked up and down the street, and then sat down on a cellar door, against the front wall of one of the tallest houses, shifted the position of the child from her shoulder to her knees, and took another survey of her surroundings. One solitary pedestrian came down the same sidewalk where she sat with the child on the cellar door, and passed by within two feet of her without perceiving her in the deep shadows. When he was gone the thoroughfare was vacant. The stage was waiting, so to speak. The old wretch seized the opportunity. She raised the sleeping child and stood up, looked about, and prepared to lay her under the steps of the front stoop beside the cellar door, when, to her confusion, Owlet moved, awoke, lifted her head and inquired: “Are we almost there?”