I thought she looked a bit crazy, but it was no business of mine.  I stood and looked back after her, but she went right on while she was in sight.  I had to go to the other side of the coppice to look after some stakes.  There’s a road right through it, and bits of openings here and there, where the trees have been cut down, and some of ’em not carried away.  I didn’t go straight along the road, but turned off towards the middle, and took a shorter way towards the spot I wanted to get to.  I hadn’t got far out of the road into one of the open places before I heard a strange cry.  I thought it didn’t come from any animal I knew, but I wasn’t for stopping to look about just then.  But it went on, and seemed so strange to me in that place, I couldn’t help stopping to look.  I began to think I might make some money of it, if it was a new thing.  But I had hard work to tell which way it came from, and for a good while I kept looking up at the boughs.  And then I thought it came from the ground; and there was a lot of timber-choppings lying about, and loose pieces of turf, and a trunk or two.  And I looked about among them, but could find nothing, and at last the cry stopped.  So I was for giving it up, and I went on about my business.  But when I came back the same way pretty nigh an hour after, I couldn’t help laying down my stakes to have another look.  And just as I was stooping and laying down the stakes, I saw something odd and round and whitish lying on the ground under a nut-bush by the side of me.  And I stooped down on hands and knees to pick it up.  And I saw it was a little baby’s hand.”

At these words a thrill ran through the court.  Hetty was visibly trembling; now, for the first time, she seemed to be listening to what a witness said.

“There was a lot of timber-choppings put together just where the ground went hollow, like, under the bush, and the hand came out from among them.  But there was a hole left in one place and I could see down it and see the child’s head; and I made haste and did away the turf and the choppings, and took out the child.  It had got comfortable clothes on, but its body was cold, and I thought it must be dead.  I made haste back with it out of the wood, and took it home to my wife.  She said it was dead, and I’d better take it to the parish and tell the constable.  And I said, ’I’ll lay my life it’s that young woman’s child as I met going to the coppice.’  But she seemed to be gone clean out of sight.  And I took the child on to Hetton parish and told the constable, and we went on to Justice Hardy.  And then we went looking after the young woman till dark at night, and we went and gave information at Stoniton, as they might stop her.  And the next morning, another constable came to me, to go with him to the spot where I found the child.  And when we got there, there was the prisoner a-sitting against the bush where I found the child; and she cried out when she saw us, but she never offered to move.  She’d got a big piece of bread on her lap.”