The baby put up its hands to her. Maida lifted it from the ground and made rapidly backwards to the cave opening. It was a lovely baby--Maida decided that at once--a girl, getting towards a year old, brown-complexioned with a thick shock of dark hair and big brown eyes. For a moment, it looked at Maida in surprise and even in baby distrust; then it began to cry. Its open mouth displayed four little white teeth. Maida put the baby down on the soft grass in the shade of some bushes. She returned to the cave. She found a candle there; some matches in an iron box. She lighted the candle. There was one pile of baby clothes, unironed though perfectly clean, but in tatters. Beside them was another pile. Somehow these seemed familiar. Maida looked closely. They were Lucy’s clothes. Then--lightnings poured through Maida’s mind--It was not a dream--Somebody had come into her room ... robbed her ... robbed little Lucy.... But she must not think of that now, with a crying, perhaps a starving baby on her hands. Further back was a bundle of hay, pressed down as though somebody older slept there. There was a little alcohol lamp and the materials for warming milk; milk bottles but no milk. Maida returned to the baby, who had resumed its crying; took it into her lap; rocked it. What should she do? The baby must belong to somebody. But where was that somebody? It was hungry now. She felt sure of that. It seemed to her that she ought to take the baby home. And yet suppose the parent should come back? Then she would be in the position of stealing a baby. What should she do? She could not go off and leave it. Nor could she stay indefinitely. She had not even told them at the Little House where she was going. They would be worried about her. They would think that, like Betsy, she was lost. Pretty soon they might send out searching parties. How she regretted her pettishness of the morning. And still if it had not been for that, she would not have come here; would not have found the baby. What _should_ she do? She put her hands over her eyes, as though shutting out the sight of things made it easier to think. Perhaps it did. For suddenly it came to her that the first thing to consider was the baby. Babies must not be neglected. Babies must be fed. It was a serious matter for them to go too long without their milk. Suddenly she pulled her little red morocco diary from her pocket; tore out a page. With the little pencil that lay in the loop of the diary she wrote: I have taken your baby to my home--the Little House. It is at the end of the trail just across the lake. I was afraid you had deserted her and she would get sick and die. I am sorry if you are worried, but you can have your baby at once by claiming her. A phrase slipped from she knew not where into her mind. She concluded with it: “and proving property.” She signed her own name and under it wrote, “Daughter of Jerome Westabrook, financier.”