faces of the semicircle of men around him.

"Who took me?" he began, defiantly, with a swagger of braggadocio, and then, as though it were hardly worth while, and as though the presence of the baby lifted him above everything else, he stopped, and raised her until her cheek touched his own. It rested there a moment, while Rags stood silent.

"Who took me?" he repeated, quietly, and without lifting his eyes from the baby's face. 'Nobody took me," he said. "I gave myself up."

66

One morning, three months later, when Raegen had stopped his ice cart in front of my door I asked him whether at any time he had ever regretted what he had done.

"Well, sir," he said with easy superiority, "seeing that I've shook the gang, and that the Society's decided her folks ain't fit to take care of her, we can't help thinking we are better off, see?

"But, as for my ever regretting it, why, even when things was at the worst, when the case was going dead against me, and before that cop, you remember, swore to McGonegal's drawing the pistol, and when I used to

sit in the Tombs expecting I'd have to hang for it. Well, even then, they used to bring her to see me every day, and when they'd lift her up, and she'd reach

out her hands and kiss me through the bars, why-they could have took me out and hung me, and been damned to 'em, for all I'd have cared."