The home of a Police Sergeant is desolate owing to the loss of his only child, a baby, whose cradle is a silent witness of his and his wife’s grief. Weeks go by and the Sergeant, grave and changed, is on his rounds when he finds an old woman worn out with cold and fatigue, clasping a baby in her arms, and who is homeless and penniless. She is led to the station house where the warm-hearted police look after her. The cold and fatigue, however, have been too much and she falls over dead, leaving the babe bereft of its last friend. When the question of placing the child in safe keeping is brought up, the Sergeant offers to take it to his own home and later he is seen entering his home with the baby under his cape. His wife is dozing and stealthily approaching the empty cradle she slips the child in. A few minutes later a plaintive cry startles the woman out of her sleep and turning to the cradle she is astonished to find the baby. Her husband explains, and his wife, compassionate, gladly takes the little one to her heart.