The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1884-07-26 00:00:00

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not been summoned in vain. It was indeed the
body of the woman whom she had known as Mrs.
Grant, the mother of the innocent child whom she
had left at home all unconscious of the irreparable
loss he had sustained, and the good woman fairly
broke down upon being brought face to face with
the sorry sight.
Of course there was to be an inquest, she was told,
and her evidence would be requlred to assist the
jury in deciding as to whether it was a case of
suicide or accident. Then she was allowed to re-
turn home to the motherless and—as far as could be
known—fatherless child thus strangely left to her
protection, which, though her husband at first
growled and insisted that the " workus" was the
proper place for the brat, she quietly accorded
him.

"Another mouth won't make much difference to
us," she replied, "specially a little tin like this.
Don't go for to send the poor little fellow to the
parish, Alick. I'll take care that he shan't be any
extra expense to you."
And Mr. Wood, who, though rough in speech and
surly of mood, was not without a
,soft place in his
heart, consented to her request.
The inquest was held in due course, but the cir-
cumstances were too common-place to excite much
interest or call forth more than short paragraphs in the
papers. Somedegree of languid curiosity, indecd, was
caused among the jury by the medical evidence,
which wcnt to prove that the deceased woman was
of a higher grade in life than outward appearances
indicated, her hands and feet being small and well
formed, though her fingers were scarred and seamed
by the use of the needle, from which it seemed
probable that she had lately earned her living as a
seam stress.
Which surmise on the doctor's part was fully
verified by Mrs. Wood, to give whose evidence,
however, at full length would be superfluous. Shorn
of the many redundancies which she indulged in it
amounted simply to this:
Mrs. Grant had first taken up her abode in Marsh
Lane about four years before, having then with her
an infant under twelve months old. She was dressed
well, and appeared to be not altogether destitute of
money, besides having a few valuable rings and some
other articles of jewellery. These, however
gradually disappeared, sold—as Mrs. Wood sur-
mised—to procure food, until at length nothing re-
iereon she could raise money. Then she
commenk. dto take in shopwork, upon the meagre pay
for which she barely contrived to exist, never leavink
the house except for the purpose of fetching and
taking home such work as she was entrusted with.
Her treatment of her child was singularly capricious,
though on the whole she seemed to be very fond of
him, but sometimes could not bear to have him in
her sight.
All these, and many more details, throwing no
light whatever upon the subject, nor tending in any
way to reveal the dead woman's identify, Mrs. Wood
recounted at length, her most important item of
intelligence consisting in the last part of her
evidence, wherein she gave a fairly accurate de-
scription of the man with whom she had last seen
her unfortunate lodger.
But no clue could be obtained to follow up the
thread by, and an open verdict of "Found drowned,"
and a short paragraph in the daily papers contained
the last record of the hapless creature who had found
her lot too hard for endurance.
One person might, had he so willed it, have
thrown more light upon the matter, but besides the
fact that George Sartoris very much repented having•
made a promise that must entail disagreeable result
`,,10n him in more ways than one, his discovery of
the loss of the packet with which he had been en-
trusted put it out of his power to redeem it.
" I shall have to advertise them, I suppose," he
muttered, having no suspicion of the actual means
by which they had gone, but imagining that he had
simply dropped them from his pocket. "It
deucedly vexatious, I daresay, though, as they can't
be of any value to the finder, I shall recover them.'
En this, however, Mr. Sartoris was mistaken. No
answer came to his advertisement, and his natural
selfishness and dislike to trouble of any sort soon
helped to reconcile him to the ccntretemps ; nay, even
to make him thankful it had so happened, and that
he was thereby relieved from a responsibility whit.)
otherwise he could not have shaken off.

(To be continued.)