Chapter I

_THOUGH SHE WAS A THIEF, YET ROBIN SHOULD
BE HONEST._

It is just possible that had these events happened yesterday instead of a few years ago, Helen might not have succeeded in carrying out her design, but as it was she secured her wish. Cleverly done, it was undiscovered until too late.

It was a busy day in the workhouse, and no one noticed the strange baby in Helen's ward. When the morning came, she soothed the child into a heavy slumber with some mixture brought for the purpose by her cousin, and was able to report him fast asleep when she went before the guardians to receive her own dismissal.

Helen had been gone an hour before the fraud she had practised was found out. Great and unusual then was the outcry and indignation. Robin was a favourite; he had secured for himself an individuality and a love seldom bestowed upon a workhouse child, and his ugly and miserable little substitute was not welcomed. But in vain the police went on the track; advertisements were put up, even rewards offered, all that was possible done; Robin was never discovered, and the new baby never claimed.

Very angry were the board of guardians, and considerable sensation and stir did the unusual event cause. The matron all but escaped dismissal, and stringent new rules were made. But nothing could get back Robin, who had been a pride and credit to the whole workhouse system, and the new baby had to take his place.

He grew up as Robin might have done, learned dependence as Robin might have learned it. On the monster school system became an automaton, not an individual; ignorant of the world, went into it; unprepared for temptation, yielded to it; failed, fell. If crime does not shorten his days in another way, he will probably return to the workhouse to die.

This is a common story, and one which points its own moral.

When Helen took away Robin, she did so with the desire to do right. The feeling she once had about her own child was awakened again for Robin. For Robin's sake, not for God's sake--she knew nothing then of God--she would do good, not evil. She returned to her old attic, she resumed the old trade. A hard and cruel trade at best, it was harder and crueller than ever now; the times were bad and work was slack and remuneration low. Labour as she might, she could not keep starvation at bay. Still for a year she struggled on, endeavouring for the boy's sake to lead an honest life, but the struggle was too great to last. One day he cried in vain for the bread she could not give him, and as for his sake she had endeavoured hard to do right, so now for his sake she fell. In the low, the very low phases of society, there are two grades, and from the low to the lowest a steep step has to be taken. There are those people who earn their bread anyhow, who pilfer and steal occasionally, who will not stop at a trifle to secure a penny, who have little conscience and little principle. These people--overworked, underfed--often see a prison, and are low, very low undoubtedly. But they are not the lowest, they are only the occasional criminals--the habitual criminals are a great step lower than they.

Hitherto Helen had belonged to the former class; more or less all her life had she belonged to it. She did not consider it wrong to steal; when theft came in her way, she became a thief; but she was not an habitual thief, and the greater part of the money she lived on was honestly come by.

For the last two years--the year of her own child's life and the year she had lived for Robin--she had been strictly honest; but now, being sorely tempted, she fell. She resolved to take the child to a place where even the police would scarcely venture; she would step down from the low to the lowest. She would become--because she so longed to keep the boy with her, and because in no other way did it seem possible for her to keep him--an habitual criminal.

She carried out her design; she and Robin disappeared into those foul and loathsome places where sin grows rank and strong; those places on earth which surely show us that hell can begin here.

Helen was a thief always now; she was worse. But she had one pure spot in her still; she loved the boy: her love for Robin never lessened or grew cold, and as much as possible she kept from him the knowledge of her ways, as much as possible she kept him apart from her evil companions. When she spoke to him she gave him her softest and best language, and she had dreams--poor, miserable soul!--that some day he might turn out well.

At first, after she had stolen him from the workhouse, when all danger of pursuit was over, she used to take him on Sundays into the fashionable streets, and point out to him the well-dressed children, and long to deck the pretty boy in garments as gay as theirs; as he grew older she would lead him by the hand, and show him the happy children at play, and put crumbs into his pockets, and teach him how to feed the birds on the Serpentine. As much as possible, wonderfully so, considering the criminal life she herself led, all his pleasures were pure pleasures.

This state of things continued until Robin was five years old. He still had the beautiful eyes, pathetic almost as a little dog's, of his babyhood; but otherwise the close, unwholesome air, and bad and insufficient food, had destroyed nearly all of his early beauty.

Just then Helen was convicted of some petty theft, and sentenced to a house of correction for three months. With little shame on her own account, she yet suffered agony for Robin. She had small fear of his wanting food and clothing; she had small fear of not finding him before her on her return to her old haunts. Yet a mighty dread pursued her. An habitual criminal herself, she still had one ray of pure light in her darkened soul. Though she was a thief, yet Robin should be honest; though she was evil, yet he should be good. This she hoped, this she longed for, this she dreamt of; and it was the dread that some one now might acquaint the child with evil that made her prison hours so long and wretched.

At last her term of imprisonment was over, and she came back to find the child well in body and apparently untainted in soul. She resumed her old life, stealing again for him, though she fondly hoped that he had never stolen.