"Look, look!" I said to the magistrate and officers when they read aloud the suspicions and accusation of the philanthropic ladies who were with me on board the Albany steamer and who, in their zeal to secure a right and correct a wrong, ignorant of the cause of my child's discomfort and unhappiness with me and the reasons for my rather suspicious reticence, had caused my arrest.
Thus do the pure and holy ever keep guard over the sins of the world and throw the cable-cord of justice around the unregenerate to drag them perforce into the path of rectitude. May they reap the reward to which their virtues entitle them.
"Look at his eyes and look at mine," I exclaimed, holding his little face up against my own. "Can't you all see that it is my child?"
"That may be, but give us the name of some one to whom we may telegraph--some tangible proof. If he is your own there must be some one who knows you and can testify in your behalf."
"No, no," I said, "there is no one. I have nobody to help me, and if God does not show you all some way and your own hearts do not convince you I don't know what I shall do."
My poor little, half-starved, in-litigation baby refused to be comforted. The kind gentleman with the shawl could amuse him no longer. He had dashed from him the keys and pushed the watch from his ear and demanded impatiently the right of sustenance. The dear, good woman beside me, with the smile of the redeemed and a look of relief lighting up her face, touched mine, whispering in my ear while I held the baby's hands to prevent him in his impatience from tearing apart my mantle and untying my bonnet-strings:
"Yes," I replied, "and he is so hungry, poor little thing."
She stood up, leaning on her cane, for she was slightly lame, and said in a voice clear and sweet:
"Gentlemen, I have a witness"--my heart almost stood still--"here, in the child who cannot speak. It is not always a proof of motherhood, but with the circumstantial evidence and the youth of this mother, this beyond peradventure is proof convincing. The child is still nourished from her own body," and she opened my mantle.
I, who had never nursed my baby in the presence of even my most intimate friends, bared my bosom before all those strange men and women and nursed him as proof that I was his mother, while tears of gratitude to the sweet friend and to God flowed down my cheeks and dropped onto baby's face as he wonderingly looked up, trying to gather up the tears with his little dimpled fingers and thankfully enjoying the proof. The men turned aside and tears flowed down more than one rugged face. The kind stranger with the shawl lifted his eyes heavenward as if in thanksgiving, and then turned them earthward and breathed a bitter curse, deep and heartfelt. Perhaps the recording angel jotted down the curse on the credit side of the ledger with as great alacrity as he registered there the prayer of thanks.