She fell into a momentary revery, thinking, as she thought so many, many times in every day, how hard and strange it seemed that no clew could be found to her lost darling beyond the terrible day that saw her dancing in the public streets,--an ignominy, that, to the lady's sensitive mind, seemed almost equivalent to death. Perhaps it would have been kinder had her husband and cousin told her the worst they knew or suspected, and allowed her to mourn her child as dead. The acute detective in whose hands the new clew had been placed had not only traced the fugitives to Springfield, as Mrs. Legrange had said, but had ascertained at what hour they left the hotel for the railway-station. It was impossible, however, to discover for what point the Italian had purchased tickets, as the station-master had no recollection of him, and the baggage-master was sure he had seen "no sich lot" as was described to him. And, from Springfield, a man may take passage to almost any point in the Union. One startling fact remained, and upon this fact the whole report of the detective turned. The train leaving Springfield for Albany upon the night when Giovanni left that town, encountered, at a certain point, another train, which, by some incomprehensible stupidity, was supposed to have passed that point half an hour before. Consequences as usual,--frightful loss of life; a game of give and take in the newspapers, as to who should bear the blame, finally resulting in a service of plate to one party, and a donation in money to the other; several lawsuits brought by enterprising widowers who demand consolation for the loss of their wives; by other men, who, having skulked the draft, now found themselves minus both legs and glory; by spinsters whose bandboxes had been crushed, and by young ladies whose beauty had suffered damage from broken noses and scattered teeth. But, among all these sufferers, not one remembered seeing an Italian organ-grinder with a little girl until, at the very last, a small boy was found, who averred, that, on the morning after the disaster, he had seen a sort of box, with a little creature chained to the top of it, floating down the river; and that the little creature had seemed very much scared, and kept laughing, and showing all his teeth; and that they had gone on and out of sight. And that was all he knew about it. The river!-what use to question those dark and swollen waters? what use to demand of them the bright form, that, it might be, slept beneath them?-it might be, had been washed piecemeal to the ocean? At the brink of that river, mournful and terrible as Styx, river of the dead, ended, that night, the story of many a life; and why not that of the child so strangely lost, so nearly recovered, and now, perhaps, lost again forever?