He was adopting the poor forsaken child,—was accepting his awkward situation, and when that was done he reported his success. There was an ejaculation of horror and surprise on the woman’s part; a quick rising up from her seat to “do something,” or “tell somebody” of the terrible thing which had transpired before their very eyes. There was a great excitement now in the car, and the passengers crowded around the boy, who told them all he knew, and then to their suggestions as to ways and means of finding the unnatural parent, quietly replied, “I shan’t try to find her. She could not be what she ought, and the baby is better without her.” “But what can you do with a baby,” a chorus of voices asked; and Roger replied with the air of twenty-five rather than fourteen, “I have money. I can see that she is taken care of.” “The beginning of a very pretty little romance,” one of the younger ladies said, and then, as the conductor appeared, he was pounced upon and the story told to him, and suggestions made that he should stop the train, or telegraph back, or do something. “What shall I stop the train for, and whom shall I telegraph to?” he asked. “It is a plain case of desertion, and the mother is miles and miles away from —— by this time. There would be no such thing as tracing her. Such things are of frequent occurrence; but I will make all necessary inquiries when I go back to-morrow, and will see that the child is given to the proper authorities, who will either get it a place, or put it in the poor-house.” At the mention of the poor-house, Roger’s eyes, usually so mild in their expression, flashed defiantly upon the conductor. While the crowd around him had been talking, a faint doubt as to the practicability of his taking the child had crossed his mind. His father was dead, he had his education to get, and Millbank might perhaps be shut up, or let to strangers for several years to come. And what then could be done with Baby. These were his sober-second thoughts after his first indignant burst at finding the child deserted, and had some respectable, kind-looking woman then offered to take his charge from his hands, he might have given it up. But from the poor-house arrangement he recoiled in horror, remembering a sweet-faced, blue-eyed little girl, with tangled hair and milk-white feet, whom he had seen sitting on the door of the poor-house in Belvidere. She had been found in a stable, and sent to the almshouse. Nobody cared for her,—nobody but Roger, who often fed her with apples and candy, and wished there was something better for her than life in that dark dreary house among the hills. And it was to just such a life, if not a worse one, that the cruel conductor would doom the Baby left in his care.