“If you please, my ladies, I first saw her in the Strand, tearing up and down the street, running after babies and nurses and bursting into shops and houses, and going on generally like one raving, distracted, with a rabble of boys at her heels hooting and jeering. So she being complained of by certain parties as she annoyed and I, suspecting of her to be a mad woman broke loose from Bedlam, or leastways making a great disturbance in the streets, I takes her into custody, and should have took her off to the station-house and locked her up, only she began to howl about the child she had lost, and I began to see what had happened to her and how it was; and I asked her where she lived, and she told me and I brought her here; and that is all about it, my ladies; but if you can get more out of her nor I could, I think it would be well you should, and then maybe we could help you to get the child, my lady,” said officer E, 48. “Oh, missus! missus! kill me! kill me! it would be a mercy!” cried Pina, wringing her hands. “I think it would be justice, at least,” answered Anna, sternly. “Where did you lose sight of him, Pina?” inquired the young mother, in a strangely quiet manner. “Oh, missus! oh, missus! knock me in the head and put me out of my misery! do! do! do!” cried Pina, gnashing her teeth and tearing her hair, rolling on the floor and giving way to all her excess of grief and despair, with all the utter abandonment of her race. “Pina!” sternly exclaimed Anna Hammond, “unless you are coherent and tell us where you lost Lenny, we shall not know where to look for him. Speak at once! where was it that you first missed him?” “Oh, ma’am! Oh, Miss Anna! Strike me dead for pity! Oh, do! oh, do!” cried the girl, growing wilder every moment. “Yes, ma’am, that was about all I could get out of her either. Begging and a praying of me to take her up and hang her because she had lost the boy. To hang her, to hang her, to hang her up by the neck until she was dead, dead, dead, was all her prayer.” “Waiter,” said Drusilla, who, though agonized with grief and fear for her lost child, was now the most self-controlled and thoughtful of the party—“waiter, go quickly and fetch a glass of wine to this girl. It may restore her faculties.” The man sprang to do the lady’s bidding, and soon returned with a bottle of sherry and a glass. Drusilla herself filled the glass, and kneeling down beside her, put it to the lips of the prostrate girl. “No, no, no!” cried Pina, pushing away the glass, and spilling its contents—“no, no, no, I won’t take it, I won’t get better, I won’t live! Somebody ought to smash me for losing little Lenny, and if they don’t I’ll die myself! I will! I will!” “Pina! nobody blames you, at least I do not. Nobody wants you to die, or to be punished. Drink this, Pina, so you may be better able to tell me about my child,” said Drusilla, gently, as she again offered wine to the girl.