It was broad daylight when the little girl awoke, and saw a policeman bending over her.

“Oh, yep!” she cried, springing up at once and adjusting the baby. “I’m on me way to de country wid de kid. I’se got de stuff;” and she would have showed him a piece of her silver if she had not feared he might take it from her. The sight of the policeman gave her a great scare—it seemed as though it were impossible to escape from the city bounds. But after a kindly word and laugh he went another way; and she presently saw a little shop where she bought some milk, and fed the baby with a great deal of gurgling on his part and of endearment on hers, refilled the bottle, and then took a look about her. There was water not far away, and ships and steamboats, and a crowd of masts and funnels.

A bold idea struck her. She went down on one of the long wharves, still shouldering the baby that had fallen asleep again, walked aboard the boat where she saw the most commotion, and sat down behind a lot of barrels. It was a freight steamer, and not twenty minutes afterward it cast off and was out in the stream and plowing its way steadily out to sea.

She knew that she could not escape discovery. But she did not believe the men would throw her overboard, and she fancied that maybe they would give her something to eat. Really she was not thinking much of anything excepting that they must get away, get away from that dreadful Institution. Poor little girl, who would have been so comfortable with the clean clothes, good food, and kind treatment of the very Institution from which she was running away, if she had only known it!

Suddenly the baby set up his tune. And then you may be sure there was an uproar, and a throng of bearded faces over her, and a chorus of loud voices round her. She was bidden out on the deck, and stood there in the ragged gown that was her only garment, with her bare feet, looking at the sailors with wild but fearless eyes, out of a tangle of hair, and clutching the baby.

“Hushy, hushy, hushy,” she said to the whimpering little thing, as she patted its back. “It’s Sally’s byby, it’s Sally’s byby. Dey sha’n’t nab Sally’s byby!”

And the long and the short of it is that they didn’t try to “nab Sally’s byby.” But they gave Sally a good breakfast, and a good dinner, and a bunk that night to sleep in, and passed the baby round, and altogether treated Sally like a princess. One of them gave her a large silk handkerchief, several of them gave her silver dollars, and the cook made the baby a little slip out of his own old shirt.

They did counsel among themselves, indeed, as to the possibility of adopting her and the baby as mascots. Sally overheard them, and became filled with new fright; for that meant going back and forth to the city, and perhaps being found by some of the Institution’s agents.

To such an extent did this new fear go that, although she knew she was leaving kind friends, the moment she could escape observation after they were at the wharf in the distant port, Sally quietly slipped ashore and made off.