She was carefully searched, with the result that in her pocket was found a half sovereign and some coppers, but none of the stolen articles. Her baby was then inspected, and on it were found a pair of worsted stockings a world too big for its little legs, with the fatal initials “A. M. B.” worked in pink worsted near the top of the leg. The case now seemed very clear, if a little sad. The woman had been in great want; had been tramping past the place, and under a sudden temptation had taken the clothes and pawned some of them. I fully expected her to admit the robbery, and plead the circumstances in piteous tones in extenuation, but nothing of the kind. She roused out of her torpor of grief, and in the most indignant tones made a statement which seemed to us to have not even the merit of ingenuity. She had been sleeping in the open air on the outskirts of the city, with her child closely clasped in her arms, “to keep it frae the caul’,” as it was but thinly clad, when she was roused by a hand shaking her violently. The disturber of her half-frozen torpor was a woman dressed like a servant girl in a common print wrapper, and carrying a big bundle. The strange woman shook her till certain that she was awake, and then rebuked her strongly for exposing herself and her child when shelter was within her reach. “I tellt her I was a stranger, and didna ken where the Night Asylum was, and that I hadna a penny in the world,” continued our prisoner. “Then she took my bairn in her arms, and kissed it and cuddled it to make it warm, and then she took the shawl off her shouthers—that shawl that you’re makin’ sic a wark aboot—and wrapped it roon’ my wean, an’ brocht a pair o’ stockin’s oot o’ her bundle for it, an’ tellt me to keep them. Then she gie’d me a shillin’, an’ tellt me to gang to a lodging in the Grassmarket, and then said she was in a hurry or she wad have ta’en me there hersel’, and gaed awa’.” And the half-sovereign found in her possession? How did she account for that? How did it happen that when the mysterious woman with the bundle spoke to her she had not a penny, and now she had a half-sovereign? “Oh, a gentleman gied me that,” she answered, quite promptly. “I was sittin’ restin’ on a step, when I got in the toon a bit—for I didna think it worth while to gang to the lodging as it was after six o’clock—when a gentleman cam’ up to me and asked me hoo far I had come, and aboot my man and my wean, and then he put his hand in his pooch, and brought oot a half-sovereign and put it in my hands. I thought it was a sixpence, for it was dark at the time, and maybe he thought that too. He looked a wee touched wi’ drink—drunk, ye ken—and I was gled when he gaed awa’.”