“It’s this way,” he said at last. “I was about three mile from Dog’s Ear when I see something lying in the road. I was near lying in the road myself, for that darned mare of mine shied as if she had seen the ghost of a hay-stack. I got down, and ther’ was a woman lying full length, with her face turned up as if she was asleep. She was as dead as a herring. Underneath her shawl, and lyin’ as snug as could be, was this here young ’un.”
He paused and looked round to enjoy the effect of his story.
“How the woman come there, and what she’s died of, I’m blamed if I know; but there she was, and there she is now. I wrapped the kid in this yere old sack and brought it on. It’s true there ain’t no direction on it, and I suppose it’s my duty to return it to the Dead-Letter office, till it’s claimed by the rightful owner.”
He smiled at the feeble joke, and one or two of the men laughed, but in a subdued way. Even their rough natures were touched by the presence of the motherless child lying so placidly, so unconscious of its loss, on the stained and battered gambling-table.
One of the men cursed the Dead-Letter office.
“It’s yours, Bill,” he said; “leastways, till somebody up and claims it.”
“What’s the good of it to me?” demanded Bill. “I ain’t got no missis to look after it, and I’d look pretty carrying a live infant in front of me on the mare! I’d best take her back to Dog’s Ear, for I reckon that’s where her mother’d come from.”
“Oh, it’s a ‘her’?” said one.
“It are,” said Bill, sententiously.