"It is not above a fortnight ago, sir," said Mr. Tatlow, in continuation, "that I struck on the scent again; not that I had forgotten it, or hadn't taken the trouble to pull at anything which I thought might be one of its threads when it came in my way. A twelvemonth ago I was down at Leeds, after a light-hearted chap who had forgotten his own name, and written his master's across the back of a three-and-sixpenny bill-stamp; and I thought I'd take the opportunity of looking in at Hodder the draper's, and ask whether anything had been heard of Miss M. The firm hadn't heard of her, and was rather grumpy about being asked; but I saw the girl from whom I had got some information before--she, you recollect, sir, who had a friend at Mivenson's in Oxford-street, and told me about E. M. being there--and I asked her and her young man to tea, and set the pumps agoing. But she was very bashful and shamefaced, and would not say a word, though evidently she knew something; and it was only when she had gone up to put her bonnet on, that I got out of the young man that Emily Mitchell had been down there, and had been seen in the dusk of the evening going up to the old cottage at Headingley, and carrying a baby in her arms." "A baby!" cried Humphrey Statham. "Yes, sir," said Mr. Tatlow, "a female child a few weeks old. She was going up to her aunt, no doubt, but the old woman was dead. When they heard at Hodder's that Emily was about the place, and with a child too, the firm was furious, and gave orders that none of their people should speak to or have any communication with her; but this girl--Mary Keith she's called; I made a note of her name, sir, thinking you would like to know it--she found out where the poor creature was, and offered to share her wages with her and the child to save them from starvation." "Good God!" groaned Humphrey Statham; "was she in want, then?" "Pretty nearly destitute, sir," said Tatlow; "would have starved probably, if it had not been for Mary Keith. She owned up to that girl, sir, all her story, told her everything, except the name of the child's father, and that she could not get out of her anyhow. She spoke about you too, and said you were the only person in the world who had really loved her, and that she had treated you shamefully. Miss Keith wanted her to write to the child's father, and tell him how badly off she was; but she said she would sooner die in the streets than ask him for money. What she would do, she said, would be to go to you--she wanted to see you once more before she died--and to ask you to be a friend to her child! She knew you would do it, she said--though she had behaved to you so badly--for the sake of old days.