“So he sits down, and writes what he said he would, and takes it away to be printed in the next day’s number of the newspaper. ‘If nothing comes of this,’ says he, ‘I think I can manage about the burial with a charitable society here. I’ll take care and inform you the moment the advertisement’s answered.’ I hardly know how it was, sir; but I almost hoped they wouldn’t answer it. Having suckled the baby myself, and kissed its mother before she died, I couldn’t make up my mind to the chance of its being took away from me just then. I ought to have thought how poor we were, and how hard it would be for us to bring the child up. But, somehow, I never did think of that--no more did Peggy--no more did Jemmy; not even when we put the baby to bed that night along with our own. “Well, sir, sure enough, two days after the advertisement come out, it was answered in the cruelest letter I ever set eyes on. The clergyman he come to me with it. ‘It was left this evening,’ says he, ‘by a strange messenger, who went away directly. I told my servant to follow him; but it was too late--he was out of sight.’ The letter was very short, and we thought it was in a woman’s handwriting--a feigned handwriting, the clergyman said. There was no name signed, and no date at top or bottom. Inside it there was a ten-pound bank-note; and the person as sent it wrote that it was enclosed to bury the young woman decently. ‘She was better dead than alive’--the letter went on--‘after having disgraced her father and her relations. As for the child, it was the child of sin, and had no claim on people who desired to preserve all that was left of their good name, and to set a moral example to others. The parish must support it if nobody else would. It would be useless to attempt to trace them, or to advertise again. The baby’s father had disappeared, they didn’t know where; and they could hold no communication now with such a monster of wickedness, even if he was found. She was dead in her shame and her sin; and her name should never be mentioned among them she belonged to henceforth for ever.’ “This was what I remember in the letter, sir. A shocking and unchristian letter I said; and the clergyman he said so too.