"I bought the cordial, and just before I started gave the baby some. I thought that I was very careful. I meant to be so. I would not for the whole world have given my baby one half-drop too much.
"It soon slept a calm, placid sleep, and I noticed that the little face grew paler. 'Your baby is dying,' said a woman, who was traveling in the third-class carriage with me. 'It is dying, I am sure.' I laughed and cried; it was so utterly impossible, I thought; it was well and smiling only one hour ago. I never remembered the cordial. Afterwards, when I came to make inquiries, I found that I had given her too much. I need not linger on details.
"You see, that if my little one died by my fault, it was most unconscious on my part; it was most innocently, most ignorantly done. I make no excuse. I tell you the plain truth as it stands. I caused my baby's death, but it was most innocently done; I would have given my own life to have brought hers back. You, my judge, can you imagine any fate more terrible than standing quite alone on the Brighton platform with a dead child in my arms?
"I had very little money. I knew no soul in the place. I had no more idea what to do with a dead child than a baby would have had. I call it dead," she continued, "for I believe it to have been dead, no matter what any doctor says. It was cold—oh, my Heaven, how cold!—lifeless; no breath passed the little lips! the eyes were closed—the pretty hand stiff. I believed it dead. I wandered down to the beach and sat down on the stones.
"What was I to do with this sweet, cold body? I cried until I was almost blind; in the whole wide world there was no one so utterly desolate and wretched. I cried aloud to Heaven to help me—where should I bury my little child? I cannot tell how the idea first occurred to me. The waves came in with a soft, murmuring melody, a sweet, silvery hush, and I thought the deep, green sea would make a grave for my little one. It was mad and wicked I know now; I can see how horrible it was; it did not seem to be so then. I only thought of the sea then as my best friend, the place where I was to hide the beloved little body, the clear, green grave where she was to sleep until the Judgment Day. I waited until—it is a horrible thing to tell you! but I fell asleep—fast asleep, and of all the horrors in my story, the worst part is that, sitting by the sea, fast asleep myself, with my little, dead babe on my knee.
"When I awoke the tide was coming in full and soft, and swift-running waves, the sun had set, and a thick, soft gloom had fallen over everything, and then I knew the time had come for what I wanted to do."
CHAPTER XII.
"I went on to the Chain Pier. I had kissed the little face for the last time; I had wrapped the pretty white body in the black-and-gray shawl. I said all the prayers I could remember as I walked along the pier; it was the most solemn of burial services to me.
"I went to the side of the pier—I cannot understand how it was that I did not see you—I stood there some few minutes, and then I took the little bundle; I raised it gently and let it fall into the sea. But my baby was dead—I swear to that. Oh, Heaven! if I dared—if I dared fling myself in the same green, briny waves!