The Argosy — page 189: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Secret of the. Sea. -197 by a low, plaintive cry that evidently came from somewhere close at hand. He stood still to listen. Presently he heard it again, evidently the wailing cry of a very young child. He looked round him on every side, but there was not a human being nor even a house visible from where he was standing. Once again the cry came, this time louder than before.- His eyes, drawn by the sound, concentrated themselves on the root of a large tree, of a tree which grew out of the hedge and overshadowed the road. Between the footpath and the hedge was a tiny watercourse, now covered with a thin coat of ice. Over this Jack strode and began to peer about in the hedge bottom. He was not long in discovering the origin of the cry that he had heard. Ina sort of tiny recess formed in part by the gnarled roots of the tree, and in part by the close-woven shoots of the hedge lay a child—a child of apparently some six months old, with a tiny, pinched face, and dark, serious eyes that gazed up wonderingly at Pomeroy for a moment and ‘then filled with tears. “A pleasant predicament truly ! ” muttered Jack to himself. ‘‘ There must surely be somebody belonging to it close by.” He swung himself up on to the root of the tree, and took a long, ‘steady look round. The point where he now was was exactly on the crown of a small hill. Right and left of him the road dipped down into a valley with the bare, treeless fields on either side. Nowhere was there a human being visible: had there been one he could hardly have failed to see it. The child had evidently been deserted—left there to be found by chance, or otherwise to die. When Jack had satisfied his mind on this point he dropped quickly from his perch, flung his stick over the hedge, picked up the child as tenderly as he knew how, stepped lightly across the brook, and set off on his way back to Stammars—a three miles’ walk. He felt very awkward indeed, and was possessed by an acute sense of the ludicrous appearance he must have presented had anyone been there to see him, which fortunately there was not. The child seemed wrapped up warmly enough, its outside covering bemg an old black skirt of some cheap material. Whether it were a boy or a girl, Jack had no skill to judge,. nor was that a point which had much interest for him. That strange, serious look in its eyes troubled him a little; but when, after it had finished its examination of him, a wintry smile flickered over its little white face, while it seemed to nestle nearer to him, he could not keep his arms from folding themselves still more closely round it. The difficulty that now presented itself to Jack’s mind was how to dispose of the child. It would never do to take the little waif to Stammars : Lady Dudgeon would have been horrified: and yet Jack shrank instinctively from the thought of leaving it to the tender mercies of the workhouse authorities, although that was clearly the proper thing to do. He was still debating the question, when he heard VOL. XIX. M ECOMICOOOKS. CO