CHAPTER XXVI.

MILLIE’S FIVE CENT PIECE.

While looking over his exchanges the other day THE NEWS editor clipped from the Switchellville Recorder a two-column article with five headings, the first of which was “Kidnapped,” in flaring letters. The article, dealing as it did with an erring woman, who had fled to the city, seemed to him to touch in some way or other the night side of city life, and in that connection interested him. It led off as follows: “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, but few are called upon to bear as much trouble as our wealthy but unfortunate fellow-townsman, Mr. Switchell. All will remember when he brought home to his handsome residence a beautiful wife. None will forget the advent of his little daughter. Everyone was sorry when he was prostrated with fever, and recovered only to find himself almost entirely deaf, or “very hard of hearing,” as the phrase goes; but the climax of sympathy was reached two months ago, when his young wife, after eight years of married life, grew tired of her deaf husband and eloped with Dr. Clarke, a man who has only been known to the people of this village one year, but who in that time has contrived to swindle almost every one of them. But a still greater blow has fallen upon him. His little daughter Millie, who had all her mother’s beauty combined with her father’s integrity, and a certain sweetness of her own, has disappeared. The neighboring country has been diligently searched, without result, and the conclusion is inevitable that the child has been kidnapped by her

BEAUTIFUL, BUT ERRING MOTHER.

No one who knew Millie will wonder at it. The only wonder is how the mother could have lived so long without her; but the sympathy of all will be with the deserted husband and lonely father. Poor little Millie! The villain Clarke will soon desert her mother whom he has already debauched, and she will drift into a life of still deeper shame. Pure as Millie is, she cannot but suffer from contact with such associations. It is this thought that has almost driven her father crazy. Oh, if men and women, before yielding to evil impulses, would remember that the little children must suffer for it, what a different world this would be.”

The article was continued to much the same effect through two columns. As the NEWS editor finished reading a letter bearing the Switchellville postmark was handed to him. It was from THE NEWS correspondent at that place, and read as follows:—“Read the Recorder for big sensation. Since the Recorder was printed a domestic in the employ of Mr. Switchell has confessed that she bought a ticket for Toronto at the request of the child, who was determined to go off in search of her mother.” THE NEWS editor said to himself “If the wanderings of that child could be followed up they would make an interesting addition to the gaslight scenes.”

* * * * *

“Whatcher cryin’ about, little girl?” said a red-haired, freckled-face, ragged boy, with a bundle of papers under his arm as he looked sympathetically at a well-dressed little girl who was wiping away with her handkerchief

THE TEARS THAT HAD ESCAPED

from her eyes despite a brave effort to keep them where they belonged. “Whatcher cryin’ about, is yer lost?” “No, I’m not, but my mamma is. A bad man lost her, and I’m trying to find her for my papa and me, ’cause we’re homesick without her.”

“Where do yer live?”

“Away, way off. I took my money from my little savings bank, and Mary bought a ticket to bring me to Toronto. She said everybody came here, and she guessed my mamma was here. I’ve just got five cents left.”

“Bully,” said the boy, “that’s just enough. If you want anything you can get it by advertising in THE NEWS for five cents.”

“Where’s that?”

“You just go down that street there until you come to the winder where all the picters is, and that’s THE NEWS.”

* * * * *

“How many papers do you want, little girl?” said a clerk in the business office of THE NEWS, as he put his head through a wicket to take a five-cent piece which a child was holding up.

“I don’t want any papers. I want my mamma,” said the child.

“Your mamma isn’t here, little girl. What is your name?”

“Millie Switchell, and I come to Toronto to find my mamma, but it’s so big I’m almost lost myself.”

“So you want to put an ad in THE NEWS, do you?”

“Will that find her?”

“Perhaps so.”

The news editor had entered the room while this dialogue was going on and he

RECOGNIZED THE CHILD.

A dispatch was sent to her father, and before he arrived Millie was persuaded that the better way would be to allow some one well acquainted with the city to continue the search. The father on his arrival said: “It may be asking too much, but I wish you would suppress the names. If you must tell the story call me Switchell and the village Switchellville. The people in my neighborhood will understand the case just as well with those names, and very few of your other readers will know that the names are incorrect. I am sensitive enough myself, but would ask no favors were it not that the publication of names might have a bad effect on the child’s future.”

Sympathy got the better of journalistic instinct, and the real names do not appear.