PART I.

HIS PARENTAGE AND TRUE DESCENT.

"Who bids for the little children—
    Body and soul and brain?
Who bids for the little children—
    Young and without a stain?
'Will no one bid,' said England,
    'For their souls so pure and white,
Aad fit for all good or evil
    The world on their pages may write?'"
                              CHARLES MACKAY
                                            —The Souls of the Children.

OUTCAST ROBIN;

OR,

YOUR BROTHER AND MINE.

CHAPTER I.

THE NEW BABY WAS CALLED ROBIN.

The sun itself seemed to be keeping holiday on the morning on which my brother opened his eyes on the world. The day was a June day, one of those days when the people who are fortunate enough to live in the country feel quite too lazy to work—when a delicious languor, a rich hazy beauty pervades the grass, trees, flowers, as well as the more distant landscape. The sort of day when those who reside in Eaton Square, or any other part of Belgravia, sit peacefully and enjoy the scent of the freshly arranged window gardens, and look forward with interest to a drive in the Park by-and-by.

Yes, the sun was keeping holiday, and pouring down right genially and right lovingly his happy rays on the earth.

Impartial, as betokens all true sovereignty, was this king of day; no idea had he of favouring the rich more than the poor. Had this not been his invariable and unexceptionable rule, it is highly probable that Mrs. Timbs, of Blind Alley, Spitalfields, London, would have been left, if not in darkness, yet in considerable fog and obscurity.

Mrs. Timbs had given birth an hour ago to her sixth son and tenth child, and she herself was just preparing to take holiday, the first holiday she had had for years. Supposing a choice to have been given her, she might have preferred to slave on a little longer; but it was not to be; she was about to stop working from morning to night, and almost from night to morning again: she was about to stop feeling hungry and cold; she was going away to a better place than she had ever known before; in short, Mrs. Timbs was going to die.

The sun, impartial and kind, struggled through the dusty window, and lay in two golden bars on the pillow. One of these grand bars of light took the new-born baby's red face into its embrace and glorified it; the other warmed the dying mother's cheek.

Patty and Molly, the two elder girls, aged respectively thirteen and fourteen, stood by the side of the bed; the sun's rays did not touch them; they stood in shadow, fit emblem of the long and dusty bit of road they had to tread before they could look for rest and a holiday, poor things!

Seven other children played happily in the court below. The father was at work, and would not be back before evening.

When the neighbour, who with officiousness but much kindness had been going in and out of the room, saw that death was really close at hand, she bent over the woman, and asked her if she would not like to say good-bye to the little 'uns h'outside?

"No," replied the dying mother feebly; they were having a good time, and she would not disturb them.

Then, taking hold of the hands of Patty and Molly, she begged of them, not with her lips, but with her eyes, to take care of the baby.

She had no words left, poor dumb and dying soul! but her imploring eyes were eloquent.

A moment or two later, without a struggle, she bade good-bye to her work-a-day life for ever.

The sun, having fulfilled its mission, softly, glidingly, but surely, left the room, and the ten orphan children and the dead mother were alone. The seven who had played so unconsciously and merrily in the court had come in, and began, some of them to scramble on the bed, to peer at and touch the mother's cold cheek, others to kick each other, and scream and cry on the floor. Molly filled the kettle and made down the fire in case father should come home to tea, and Patty tried to soothe and nurse the new baby.

In these attempts she was unsuccessful, for although he had lain very quiet when the sun's rays had seemed to bless his little red face, he wailed and wailed now, and refused to be comforted.

The seven intermediate children were called Sally, Phil, Dick, Tom, Janey, Bill, and Joe. Getting tired at last of quarrelling and touching mother's dead cheek, they clustered round Patty, to examine and admire the new baby.

"'He's a queer 'un," said Dick, aged ten. "My h'eyes I look at 'is red 'air—he's a carrots, and no mistake."

"No, he ain't," said Tom; "he's a reg'lar tip-topper, I say."

Tom's reason for this burst of admiration was in no way caused by his love for the baby, but from the desire, fostered by circumstances within him, to contradict and oppose Dick.

Presently one child began to pinch the new baby's toes, and another to try and pull him out of Patty's arms.

Patty, however, the motherly one of the family, sat firm.

"Stop that!" she said, administering a slap with right good-will and sure aim all round; then, when the storm of sobs and shrieks which this proceeding had called forth died away—

"Wot'll we call 'im? Timbs is 'is surname, safe enough, but he must 'ave a chrissen name, same as h'all of us."

"Mother used to give us our chrissen names," said little Janey in an awed voice, realising, for the first time as she spoke, that mother was really gone.

"Call 'im anythink," said Phil roughly. "Tom'll do fine; no, we 'ave a Tom; and Joe—wy, that 'ere young 'un's Joe. My h'eyes and stars! there ain't any name left fur the new baby; wot a lark!"

The children's imagination was not vivid, nor their vocabulary large; and the Joes, Toms, Dicks, and Phils being already used up, and held strenuously to by their owners, there seemed in truth no name left for the tenth baby.

Phil proposed that either Tom or Joe should resign theirs in favour of the new-comer. Tom and Joe refused to comply, on which occasion fresh quarrelling ensued.

"I have it," said Molly, clapping her hands: "there's the bird book."

Yes; they possessed one book, and Molly could read.

It was a book with coloured engravings of birds with gay plumage. Robin Red-breast graced the frontispiece. Need the children go any farther? The new baby was called Robin.

CHAPTER II.

NO ONE CAN SAY THE "DOLPHIN" WAS NOT DOING
ITS WORK WELL.

The father of all this family, and the widower of this dead woman, came in about ten o'clock, a good deal the worse for drink; but this being Timbs' normal condition, at least his condition whenever his children held intercourse with him, caused them now no surprise.

The children knew that he would come home drunk, and also knew that, either drunk or sober, he would express no sorrow for mother; he had, as they roughly worded it, given her far more kicks than halfpence of late. Never did any of them, except Patty and Molly, remember father to have addressed a kind word to mother; for just about the time that the other children could begin to exercise their memories, Timbs had begun another practice,—a practice which took from mother all chance of loving words, and from them all hope of the comforts of life.

Just then he had taken up visiting the Dolphin, and the Dolphin had exercised the influence it might be expected to exercise over him.

Many a church has failed in its duty, but places like the Dolphin never fall short in this particular!

Not they; they have their own master to serve, and they serve him well. They go warily but surely to work, beginning with the bodies of men and women, and ending with their souls.

Can it be possible that if the Church, too, began with the bodies of men, it would have more success? This may be so; there is such a thing as learning even of an enemy.

The Dolphin having got Timbs within its clutches, quietly, but surely, effected his ruin. He was a very fine man when he entered those doors; he had great physical power; he stood six feet high.

Those were the days, when, in full work, strong in body, vigorous and shrewd in intellect, Timbs had owned a small house of his own in not too poor a street; a house where geraniums flourished in the windows, and white muslin curtains graced the best sitting-room.

Those were the palmy days remembered so well by Patty and Molly, when mother possessed a nice bonnet and shawl, and father and she went for a walk in the Park on Sunday evenings.

In those days mother's face was smiling and her cheeks rosy, and she had a pleasant word for every one; in those days, too, father used to kiss them, and bring home for their edification that wonderful book of birds in penny parts.

If there was anything that Molly and Patty still loved, it was that bird book, carefully stitched together, and bound in a brown linen cover. That book they never would allow to go to the pawnshop; it was the only thing left to them of their halcyon days.

But these days were now all over; from the time the Dolphin had received father into its deadly embrace, this pleasant state of things had passed away. Ruin had come,—gradually, of course, but none the less surely. Down, step after step, had the family descended; each fresh child at its birth opening its eyes in a poorer room, on poorer surroundings.

Mrs. Timbs had worked harder and harder, and gone out in more and more shabby clothes, and one by one taken the little comforts away to the pawnshop, never to bring them back again. She turned her hand patiently to any means by which an honest penny might be earned, for hers was a brave nature: she went out charing, she took in needlework, she took in washing; but however willing the spirit, the poor human body was weak. The face of Mrs. Timbs grew thin and hollow, the frame of Mrs. Timbs became skin and bone. Of her heart no one spoke, no one thought; but there was a pathos about her eyes, and a few lines about her mouth, which showed that her heart was not at rest. Neither Timbs nor his wife were religious people. In their palmy days they had never gone to church; they had spent Sundays in the Park or resting at home. Very innocent Sundays they had passed in those days, but in no sense of the word religious ones. In her happy days Mrs. Timbs had never sought after God. She knew of God, of course; she knew also something of the Bible, and had even once gone so far as to tell to Patty and Molly the story of Moses being drawn out of the water; but with religion in a practical way she did not trouble her head. Her idea was that religion was a very dull thing; that there was a great deal of moonshine and false sentiment about religious people, but that, of course, it was useful for consumptive and dying folks to think about it.

Neither in her dark days did she turn to religion; but a verse from the old Book she had neglected and cast aside, floated now and then before her mind, rang now and then in her ears.

"Come unto Me, and I will give you rest," was the verse.

At night, when she lay down with every limb aching, she thought of this verse; in the morning, when she rose to her unthankful toil, it returned to her. All the last few months before Robin was born, this verse went about with Mrs. Timbs, and became the echo of her every wish.

The ruin, however, that the Dolphin effected indirectly on Mrs. Timbs, was nothing nothing at all to the ruin it directly effected on her husband.

In the first place, it undermined his health—his eyes grew dim, his frame weak and stooping, his powerful arm nerveless. He was a mason by trade, and, before he went to the Dolphin, could ascend any height without dizziness; but he had to give all this up now; he suffered from burning thirst, he loathed all wholesome food; in short, the health of the man was gone, and he had already passed through two attacks of delirium tremens.

In the next place, the Dolphin attacked his mind.

Timbs was a clever fellow; plenty of thought had he, and plenty of ingenuity: he could reason out a point with any one, and win the day for his own opinions too, which opinions were honest and right enough. He had a turn for mechanics, he liked to read, he liked to digest what he had read. What works of a useful and educational tendency he could afford, he took in, in weekly parts; but, with the exception of the book of birds, they had long since disappeared into that great caldron for dissolving all home comforts, the pawn-shop.

And the man never missed what had once been his pride, never regretted for an instant what once he could hardly live without, for his brain was dull and clouded, his thinking powers gone. No, Timbs never troubled himself to think now; the Dolphin had done this for him.

To complete his ruin, this mistress of iniquity attacked his soul.

There were many good points in the man once, he had been a loving husband and a kind father; his little children used to cling about his neck and kiss him; his wife's face used to brighten at his approach. He was liked too by the neighbours, for he was good-natured and obliging.

But now he beat his wife, he cursed his children—they fled at his approach, they shrank in terror from his glance; no pity moved him, no tears softened him.

In short, the Dolphin had made not a brute, but a devil of what had once been created in the likeness of God.

The children of this couple grew up as such children would be likely to grow up, stunted in body, undeveloped in mind.

The poor mother could hardly feed them, much less attempt to educate them: the father endeavoured to injure, but not to improve them.

Molly and Patty were the best of the group. Molly and Patty had as babies been properly fed. As little children they had enjoyed some of the good things of life; they also could remember kind words and tones with a ring of love in them. Consequently they were the strongest in body, and the best in soul.

They were by no means either good or amiable, but they were less bad and less unamiable than the seven who came beneath them. These little girls were employed at a factory where they managed to support themselves, and so lighten their mother's burden; and though they told lies, and though in every possible way they cheated their employers and quarrelled with their neighbours, yet they loved their mother; they loved each, the other. There was quite a tender attachment between this rough little pair. I think either would have died for the other. As for the seven below them—the seven who had always been starved and used roughly, on whom the world had always frowned, and never, even in infancy, smiled—these little miseries, who drew in starvation, cruelty, hunger, with their first breath—why, they grew up something like Cain. If every man's hand was against them, so would their hands be against every man.

Of the men and women who grow out of such children, the prisons are full; and for such children, though no man takes pity on them, I think the angels weep.

Sally, Phil, and Dick were thieves, practised and clever little thieves, already. Joe, Tom, Janey, and Bill were following in their steps.

All this, the ruin of this whole family, was owing to the Dolphin. No one can say that it was not doing its work well.

It was not with any strong hope of father's return that Molly had put down the kettle for tea. But though she had not done it with a hope, she had certainly done it with a longing. It was very important, indeed, now that mother was dead and a new baby come that father should, if possible, be brought in sober.

Having put down the kettle, she went into the neighbour's room, the same poor woman who had been kind to them that morning.

"Mrs. Jenkins," she said, "I'm mortal feared 'bout the new baby."

"Why so, my dear? he's a nice 'ardy little chap; he won't die, Molly."

"Oh! it ain't that," said Molly; "but yer knows wot dad is in 'is cups, and he did sware dreadful wen Bill was born."

"The unnat'ral brute!" ejaculated Mrs. Jenkins. "Well, but, Molly, you can hide the little 'un, sure-ly."

"'Ee'd be positive to ax fur 'im, ma'am; besides, the baby must be fed. No, but ef we could catch father sober. I've bin thinkin'—I remember"——

"Set down, gal. Yer all of a tremble."

"I remember, Mrs. Jenkins, ma'am, wen father—I remember wen father was real kind, and he kissed Patty and me, and he was fond o' mother. 'Tis ages back now, but Patty and me, we remembers of it. And wot I'm thinkin' is, ef we could catch 'im sober, why, I'd tell 'im 'bout mother, and mebbe 'ee'd get soft-'arted to the little 'un!"

Molly expressed her thoughts very badly, in broken and poor words and with indistinct utterance; but the heart of the child was shining in her eyes, and Mrs. Jenkins understood her.

"Ef an'think 'ill move 'im, 'tis the sight as he'll clap 'is h'eyes upon in yer room to-night. You run back, Molly, gal; and I'll make fur the Dolphin, and ef he's not too long there h'already, I'll bring 'm in home, by hook or crook. Oh! and stop; 'ere's a drop o' milk fur the baby."

But Mrs. Jenkins was unsuccessful. Timbs had been at the Dolphin for an hour and more. Even there, into that abode of horrors did the brave woman follow him; but the message she tried to deliver, and the very awful news she tried to break to the miserable drunkard, were drowned in jeers and laughter. If Mrs. Jenkins was not kicked out, it was only because she fled in terror.

CHAPTER III.

"WOULD IT NOT BE POSSIBLE TO GET RID OF
THE BABY?"

It was past ten o'clock when Timbs tottered home, and threw himself on the bed. The children, even Molly and Patty, were asleep, tired out. The new baby never stirred; the drunkard lay like a log, and the dead woman rested best of all. The moon shone in on the white face of the dead, on the bloated face of the drunkard, on the evil faces of the children, who might have been looking like little angels just now but for his sin. The moon passed on, and for a short time the room was in darkness; then the twilight before the dawn appeared, making objects ghastly and uncertain; then the dawn, then the full light of day. Contrary to his wont, Timbs was the first to wake. His head ached less than usual that morning, his brain was less confused; in short, he was more himself, and more capable of understanding and taking in the scene he was about to witness. He had been dreaming, in a confused sort of way, of his wife—of his wife as she used to be years ago. A pretty, rosy-faced woman was Sally Timbs in those days, and Timbs was proud of her. In his dream, which only lasted a few moments, he had recrossed the abyss, and stood once more on the old solid ground. In his dream, he was back again in the days when the Dolphin did not know him, nor he the Dolphin. He had a comfortable home, and Molly and Patty were pretty children, with curling hair and bright faces.

He awoke from this dream with the word "wife" on his lips. I think, had she been alive then he would have given her a kind word. Would to God his dream had come to him yesterday! He said "Wife," and then lay still; for a brief half-instant, after awaking, he lay still—he had really forgotten that he was not what he dreamed he was, a prosperous and successful man: when the knowledge returned to him, which of course it did very quickly, he still lay without moving; he was busy sending back the dream, which had been pleasant, but was now hideous, into some far recesses of his memory.

Then he moaned uneasily, said "Wife" in a harsher key: his morning headache was returning to him; she should get up and make him a cup of tea.

Why did not she stir? He saw her outline quite distinct under the thin counterpane. How sound she was sleeping! He was about to give her a push—a push a trifle less hard than usual, but still a push—when something, he knew not what, seemed to stay his hand; he sat up and looked at her.

When Timbs looked at his dead wife, he also looked all his sins full in the face.

He knew instantly what had happened. He darted out of bed, and fell on his knees, not to pray—he had never prayed in his life—but because he trembled so, he could not stand. The dead face, pinched, drawn, and white, had a fascination for him.

He touched it with his trembling fingers; he longed intensely to get away from it, and yet he could not stir. His knees felt bound with irons to the floor; his hands must, whether he liked it or not, touch that cold cheek; his eyes must rest on his wife's dead face. And all the time he was looking also at his sins. He knew that he had killed Sally; that he had finished the work the Dolphin had set him to do. He had committed murder!

His thoughts took no connected form, for his mind was too much gone, and even this shock failed to clear that muddled brain; but he felt horrible, and he knew that he deserved hell. Sally was dead; lying stiff by his side all night a corpse had been, and he had been dreaming of his wife as rosy-faced and beautiful. He had awakened and felt thirsty, and thought that he would order her up to make him a cup of tea. Even in dying that patient woman would have struggled to obey him; but now she was dead. He might storm at her now, but she would not heed him; he might beat her now, but she would not feel his blows. Sally was too great for him at last. She had passed beyond his power—she was dead!

He had killed her; he and the Dolphin had worn her to what she was. She was dead, and he deserved hell.

These, though hardly in sustained thought, but in confusion frightful as a nightmare, were some of the sensations of this poor lost wretch.

After a time his bodily thirst overcame his mental pain, and he stumbled to his feet, and looked about him for something to drink. The kettle, placed by Molly there the night before, still hung over the ashes in the grate.

He took a draught from it eagerly, drinking from the spout.

As he set it down again he heard an infant's cry. The feeble, sharp cry of a new-born baby smote on his ear. A strange look came into his face at that cry—a new expression which he had certainly not worn a moment before. Then he had been at the verge of remorse, of sorrow, of repentance; a word, a touch, almost a look, would have taken the man then into the Valley of Humiliation, through which and the Shadow of Death he might have passed into a new life; but at the baby's cry the agony on his face gave way to an expression of selfishness and cunning.

There was another mouth to be fed, and he must feed it; there was another child to take from the Dolphin's spoils. He pictured the whole state of affairs vividly enough now. The wife who worked so hard, and earned far more than he of late had earned, was gone, and Molly and Patty would persecute him for money to buy milk and food for this fresh and unwelcome mouth.

The older children might manage as they could, but the baby must take from his spoils and lessen his enjoyment.

Would it not be possible for him to get rid of the baby!

Not to take away its life, but to hand it over to the State. He had heard of such things being done. He could carry the new baby to the workhouse—not to a very near workhouse—and leave him there. Just outside the workhouse doors, in a place where he would be certain to be seen, he could leave him. He never thought of a search being instituted—of the missing child being asked for; his brain was too much addled, too much confused, to connect danger to himself in the act.

He considered the idea a cunning and clever one; an idea by which he could get rid of this unwelcome addition to his family.

And the baby would be provided for by the State; much better off too; he rubbed his hands over the thought.

By this time his transient sorrow for Sally had departed, and he was only anxious to take away the baby before the other children should awake.

Molly, stretched on some straw on the floor, slept, too weary to stir; and the new baby lay in her arms and cried. He was hungry, and, deprived of his mother's love and mother's care, life in its first dawning was hardly pleasant to him.

Timbs had no difficulty in removing the baby from Molly's arms. He wrapped a tattered shawl about him, and laid him down, while he fumbled for his own hat, by the side of the dead woman.

The dead mother's face had a smile on it, and even in death she would have welcomed her child; the father, all the heart in him swallowed up by the Dolphin, now in life rejected him.

It was not five o'clock yet, when Timbs, carrying the baby, went out.

There were few people about; he chose unfrequented paths; he was hardly noticed.

The little bundle in his arms, soothed by the motion, forgot its hunger, and went to sleep.

Timbs selected a workhouse quite in the east-end, and a long way off.

Outside the heavy and dreary black doors he laid the baby.

PART II.

WHAT WE DID FOR HIM.

"'I bid,' said Beggary, howling,
    'I bid for them, one and all!
I'll teach them a thousand lessons—
    To lie, to skulk, to crawl!'"
                                            CHARLES MACKAY
                                                            —Souls of the Children.

CHAPTER I.

"WE PLACED HIM IN THE HOME PROVIDED BY US
FOR SUCH CASES."

Robin having been thus early in life deprived of both his parents—of his mother by death, of his father by desertion—it became our duty to provide for him. He, being bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, must not be left to starve and die; we must start him in life with at least a fair chance of success; and being obliged to stand in loco parentis to this baby, we placed him in the home provided by us for such cases. We gave of our money, that Robin and other orphans and permanently deserted children might be brought up, until the age of sixteen, in the workhouse.

We did not do this willingly. It is the first duty in life that parents should provide for their own children, and with this law we, as Britons, never like to interfere.

Accordingly, when the miserable baby was found on the steps of the workhouse, the first thing necessary was, if possible, to discover his parents; and, if possible, to hand him back to them. To aid us in this, the police were set on the track; the child was examined, any peculiarities with regard to his appearance noted down, and search instituted in various ways. Perhaps, however, with all our searching, nothing would have been found out but for a fact quite overlooked by Timbs.

In due time, in Blind Alley, Mrs. Timbs had to be buried, her death inquired into, and the missing baby asked for.

A baby of two days old missing in Blind Alley—a baby of two days old unaccounted for in the union at David's Row, Whitechapel: the link was complete, the police and the State triumphant. Timbs was outwitted; he had reckoned without his host; the unwelcome burden was to be returned upon his hands: but not only so; his offence was punishable, the law would punish him.

Timbs, wishing neither for the baby nor the punishment, again called his scattered wits to work; this time with better success. He absconded, deserting not only the baby, but the nine older children.

He was no great loss to any of them, and none of them, not even Molly and Patty, troubled themselves to look for him; they believed he had gone to America. For my part, I am glad to let his name drop out of Robin's story. I have never heard of him since.

By this act of Timbs he certainly managed to punish the State for not thankfully and without a murmur accepting his one child, for now several more had to be housed, fed, and trained in the way that they should go. On investigation, it was found quite impossible for Molly and Patty, working as diminutive "hands" at a factory from eight in the morning to half-past five in the evening, and earning respectively for this labour sixpence and sevenpence a day, to take care of any members of the family but themselves.

The little thieves were accordingly sent to reformatories, and the other children to Paul's Gate pauper school. For the present the baby, Robin, was to remain in the workhouse, at the door of which his father had placed him. He was to be put into the infirmary and taken care of by the pauper women, and if he proved a healthy child, at the age of two years he would be forwarded for the purposes of education to the school at Paul's Gate.

Thus far he was provided for.

In the investigation that followed the baby's arrival, there was found, pinned to his dirty pink frock, the identical coloured print of Robin Redbreast, after which the children had called him This print had been cut out of the book of birds, and fastened on the baby's dress on the sly, by Phil, for the purpose of annoying Patty; but the use of it now was, that when the chaplain came to baptize the child, he called him Robin; and this pretty name, joined to his pretty face, helped to make the child a favourite, even in so poor a place as the workhouse infirmary.

There were numbers of babies in all the wards of the workhouse infirmary—babies of poor deserted mothers, orphan babies, babies of the honest but half-starving poor, babies also—and there were many of these—of idle, drunken, and reckless parents, who looked upon the workhouse as a provident club, very useful for a day of need. The babies, as a rule, came and went with their mothers, the orphans and deserted children alone making a home of the workhouse infirmary.*

* George Hartley, author of "The Parish Net," says, that in England alone, 18,000 children are annually deserted and taken to the workhouses of the country.

It was not a cheerful place for a young life to open in—by no means a cheerful place; the spirits of pauperism and dependence were too much about, and the sick and dying were too near the little lives that should hardly know just yet what sickness and dying meant.

But though not a good place, by no means the place we would choose to bring up our own babies in, there might have been worse abodes for the dawning of life even than the workhouse infirmary. It was decidedly a good thing for Robin that his father had laid him down outside those stern-looking black doors, for what his life would have been brought up in Blind Alley, deprived of his mother, no words can say.

The other little Timbses, starved as they undoubtedly were, in their babyhood at least were caressed, and largely blessed with a whole wealth of mother love poured out upon them by the poor faithful heart now in its grave. But Robin would have been starved without the love, so the workhouse was a much better place for him. There at least he was clothed and fed, and in a measure, and after a fashion, well taken care of.

His life, begun thus smoothly, might have gone on to its fitting close. He might have gone through the usual career of a pauper child—in process of time joined his brothers and sisters at the pauper school at Paul's Gate; in process of time also, have been apprenticed to a trade, and have eventually turned out, with the thousands of paupers, badly—or again, with the thousands of paupers, well; for after all that has been said and written against them, the pauper schools train perhaps as well on the monster system, as any other schools on the monster system, all such systems being, however, directly contrary to nature, and therefore bad.

CHAPTER II.

THE DEED WAS DONE WHICH WAS TO ALTER
ROBIN'S LIFE.

Robin might have gone on, on this uniform plan; have been prepared for the world of which he knew nothing, on this uniform pattern; his dress, food, education, moral training, body, mind, soul, an exact counterpart of the boy standing next him.

In this case he would have been uninteresting, and his story certainly need never have been written; but circumstances came in the way, and the waif and stray at his birth was all too quickly to become a waif and stray again.

I have said that Robin had a pretty name, and was a pretty boy. The former may, of course, be a matter of taste, though I think Robin—reminding me as it does of that dear, brown-coated, red-breasted, bright-eyed bird of winter—pretty; but with regard to his appearance there was no second opinion; with regard to the beauty of his little face there was but one voice. In this matter, all who saw him cried, "Ay."

Mrs. Timbs had once been pretty; John Timbs, before he visited the Dolphin, had been a fine-looking man; but on none of their children had any portion of their good looks descended, until Robin came. This can hardly be wondered at.

Robin might have grown up like the other little Timbses had he continued to live in Blind Alley, but in the workhouse he developed into a beautiful boy.

His hair, pronounced by his undiscerning brothers and sisters carroty at his birth, had shaded off into little tight rings and clustering curls of dark auburn tipped with gold; his complexion was fair, his eyes brown, velvety, spaniel-like; his little limbs were round and white.

Even the workhouse ugly blue calico could not disfigure this boy. He was the pride of the place, the show child whom all visitors admired and petted; his looks spoke volumes for his good treatment, and during his stay at David's Row, the infirmary got quite a name for the excellence of its management.

Things were in this state, and Robin was the pet of the old women, the darling of the young, the favourite of all—even the dying would not die without kissing Robin farewell. Robin was in this high favour and happiness, for he was a very happy child, when one day a fresh inmate was brought into the ward.

Robin was rather more than a year old at this time.

The fresh visitor, or casual—for she only came for a time—was young. She was entered in the parish books as twenty-two—her name, Helen Morris—married, deserted by her husband, earned money by button-holing. This was her brief history, or at least all of it she chose to tell. She came into the infirmary to be cured of a certain illness which the doctors said they could cure her of. As soon as ever this was accomplished, she would leave.

She was rather good-looking, had black eyes which no one cared to trifle with, and a habit of compressing her lips, which the nurses and pauper women declared afterwards they could not abide.

Curiosity, however, is a weed which can flourish apace even in the pauper ward of a workhouse infirmary, and curiosity was very rife about Helen Morris.

In appearance she was certainly above her present surroundings, but then in dialect, no poor woman there spoke worse; that is when she did speak, for she would scarcely speak at all. Those who wanted to draw her out, took pains, but the pains led to no results. In vain the strongest and best cups of tea were brought to her bedside by neighbours who hoped to be rewarded by a little confidence for these services; in vain the most tempting portions of the workhouse viands were piled upon her plate; in vain looks of sympathy were directed towards her. If Helen had a history, she did not choose any one there to know of it. All day long she lay on her narrow bed, suffering a good deal, but uncomplaining, uncommunicative.

In the bed next to Helen's was a young woman of about her own age, dying of consumption. This young woman used to fret a great deal at the thought of leaving a tiny fair baby who was also in the workhouse. One day the news had to be broken to this poor young mother that her baby was dead. In reality death meant union for her, but she wept and moaned most bitterly and passionately over the little corpse.

When she grew calm, Helen opened her lips once to address her.

"Ef I was you, I'd draw it mild," she said. "When God H'almighty's makin' it hup to yer in this fashion, I'd draw it mild."

"How?" asked the consumptive young woman in astonishment.

"Ain't yer a-dying?"

"Yes, I be."

"And ain't the kid dead? and yer a-goin' to 'ave 'im h'all to yerself in God H'almighty's world. Ugh! the ongratitude of some folks."

Here Helen closed her eyes with a gesture of disgust; but these remarks did not tend to make her a favourite.

A few days after, the consumptive young woman died, and the bed next to Helen's was empty.

She was lying one afternoon, her eyes as usual shut, her lips as usual compressed with some thought which surely was keeping the poor heart within very restless, when Robin, fast asleep, was laid on the empty bed by her side. He looked beautiful in his sleep, his fair cheeks flushed, his bright curls shading his handsome little face.

"Bless him for a beauty, the darlint!" said an Irish woman, as she covered him up tenderly. When the Irish woman went away Helen turned on her side, opened her eyes slowly, and gazed at the sleeping boy.

She had never noticed him before; when any workhouse child came in her way she invariably shut her eyes and compressed her lips. What the other women blamed her, and shrank most away from her for, was her dislike to children, for this is a sin no true woman will forgive.

But now she gazed at Robin with a strange look; at first it was agony; her face began to work, her black eyes to flash. She bit her lips and clutched convulsively at the sheet, then tears started to her eyes, she buried her head under the clothes, and her sobs shook the bed.

The storm-shaken woman dragged him into her bed, covered him with caresses, and then let him go. No one had observed this little scene, but the deed was done which was to alter all Robin's life.

CHAPTER III.

HELEN PUT ROBIN INTO THE DEAD CHILD'S PLACE.

Helen's history was this—a clever, bright girl, wanting in principle, wanting in every religious thought, she grew up without even proper moral training. She was an only child. Her father kept a small tobacconist's shop; he was hard-working and honest; her mother, a very ignorant woman, was also honest. They were fairly well-to-do and they both idolised Helen. She made their lives miserable by her idle, wild, and disobedient ways. She would learn no trade, she would settle to no employment, she was self-willed, bad-tempered, she was even lightly spoken of. All this rendered the old couple unhappy, but her marriage at nineteen broke their hearts.

She was not good herself, by no means even morally good, but her husband was one of the worst of men. He treated her cruelly, brutally; at the end of a year he deserted her.

By this time her parents had died; she had no money, she had no one to help her, and she had a child.

But this, though it appeared so dark, was the brightest and best part of her life.

She had never loved her father and mother, she had never loved her husband, but she passionately loved her child. For the first time something good awoke in her heart; with the baby's eyes and the baby's touch came the first desire of her whole life after right. She was glad the child's father was gone; his father was all evil, but the child himself was all purity and sweetness. She was naturally the most idle of women, but for the child's sake she would be industrious. She was by no means honest: she had, since her birth, committed a thousand small thefts, but the child must have honest bread, for nothing evil should touch him. She learned button-holing, a very poor trade, and by it she managed to subsist and to support the child. She slaved from morning to night. She shared a miserable attic with another girl. Into this attic the sun poured in summer, and the rain dropped in winter, but Helen minded no hardships; she had her child, and this was the happiest and best period of her life.

She never had the child baptized; she gave him no name; he was just baby to her—her baby, her darling. He was a sweet little fellow, very bright and winning; he had a way of drawing looks from that wild woman's eyes, and sentences from her untutored heart, that must have made the angels smile with pleasure; but for some reason, known best to his Heavenly Father, he was not to be left with her. When he was a year old, the baby died.

This was Helen's story—just all that was good in her locked up in a child's grave. After his death she slaved and worked still, but the motive power was gone. Now she felt the hardships of her lot; her health gave way, and in time she found herself obliged to take refuge in the workhouse infirmary. No creature more ready for desperate actions, no more hardened soul had ever taken refuge there.

She was in this state, untouched and unmoved by any one, when Robin came to her, and behold! in one instant the heart that had been as it seemed for ever locked by one baby, was opened by another. Helen put Robin into the dead child's place, and she loved him as her own soul.

All this was done in an instant; just one touch of the little hands, one pressure of the little lips, and the deed was done.

From this hour she began to get better; she no longer lay all day long with her eyes closed; they were opened wide enough now to watch Robin. When he laughed, she smiled; when he cried, she frowned; she would have almost killed in her fury any one who attempted to touch a hair of his head. But she never called him to her, and not a soul guessed her feelings.

She got contented, however, and, as a probable consequence, better. Her disease began to yield to remedies. After a time she could leave her bed and walk about.

The workhouse children toddled under her feet, but she swept them all aside, and no one cared to ask her to take care of any of them. Even Robin, whom she devoured with her eyes, she never offered to touch.

One day, however, the universal favourite was dull and heavy, and the next day his bright face was missing.

Helen, white as a sheet, went up and asked the matron the reason of this.

"Oh! little Robin! he has the measles," she replied lightly. "We had to put him into a ward by himself, and very inconvenient it is. I'm just looking round now for some woman to go and nurse him, and I'm sure I don't know who to choose."

"Choose me," said Helen, trembling, but standing firm, and looking the matron full in the face.

"You! you poor creature! why, you were in your own bed a week ago."

"Yes'm, but I'm most well now, and uncommon 'andy. Send me, matron!"

I don't know why,—perhaps because she was very short of hands just then, perhaps because the work was light, but the matron did select Helen for Robin's nurse. The work, as she knew, was very little; the child was scarcely ill at all; but this step settled his fate. If Helen had loved him before, she loved him so passionately now that she could not do without him.

It came into her head to steal Robin from the workhouse, and bring him up as her own child.

When she left that dreary abode, he should also leave it; and she would toil and labour for him, and he should be to her in the place of her dead baby.

CHAPTER IV.

THE WOMAN WAS GROWING HUMAN.

It was a daring scheme, and one very difficult to carry into execution; but she was a daring woman and a cunning one, and she went warily to work.

Such a thing as a pauper woman stealing an unknown orphan child from the workhouse had never been heard of; such a case had certainly never been brought before the guardians; their difficulty was not how to secure and keep children, but how to dispose of those they had got. Still Helen knew that the law was stringent, and that it would be utterly useless for her to ask for Robin.

And yet she must have him.

She set her wits to work. Robin's illness was favourable to her designs, otherwise she could never have carried them out.

It so happened that at this time the workhouse infirmary in David's Row was undergoing considerable alterations, and was in consequence more or less in a state of confusion. There was no regular ward fitted up for infectious cases, which, as a rule, were instantly removed to the hospitals; but Robin being a baby and a favourite, and his illness being very slight, the matron put him into a small room apart from the rest of the building, and this room he and his nurse had quite to themselves.

He was quickly well again, but was not allowed to return to the other wards on account of infection; and Helen, now perfectly recovered herself, remained also to nurse him.

The woman was growing human and happy, when one day, after the doctor's visit, she was told that she would receive her discharge that day week. She would have been sent away sooner but for her services to the boy.

Then the design she had only hitherto thought of calmly, and in the distance, came close. In a week she was to go, and Robin must go too—she would not stir from the workhouse without him; no, no power should drag her from the child.

She was sorely puzzled how to act, and in this difficulty, had she known anything really of God, she would have certainly asked Him to help her; as it was, however, she lay awake all night thinking out her own plan, which was quite bold and clever enough. When she had thought it well out, she grew calm and played again with Robin. No fear of her courage failing her in carrying it out.

Helen had a cousin, the young woman who used to share her attic; and this woman also had a child—a child about Robin's age.

How Helen had hated that child after her own had died! But if she hated it, neither did its mother love it. She was not like Helen; she considered her baby a burden, and openly expressed her wish that it might die, or that she could get rid of it.

This woman came very often to see Helen; generally, for the simple reason that she could not leave it at home, bringing her child with her. This child had also just recovered from the measles; therefore, on the score of infection, it was not required to be kept away.

They came, the cousin and her child, the day after Helen had heard the news that she was to leave. To this woman Helen confided her plan in a few short, well-chosen sentences. The woman listened, demurred, hesitated, finally yielded. She agreed to do what Helen wished, and promised without fail to come to see her the day before Helen left.

It was a very daring and dangerous plan, but Helen would run any risk to obtain possession of Robin.

So softened and changed was she that the matron took a fancy to her, believed her to be of a more respectable class than her neighbours, trusted her more than they, and above all things, what Helen most wished, left her a good deal to herself.

On the appointed day, true to her appointment, Helen's visitor, bearing the baby, arrived. The visitor's baby was a brown-tinted child of the gipsy type; his hair had been cut off in the measles.

"Yere's the dye," said the woman, "and yere's the brat. Don't keep me, Helen, fur, I can tell yer, I'm in a reg'lar fright."

"I won't keep you," said Helen, her white lips working a trifle, her dark eyes flashing. Quick as thought, she transferred the clothes of the one baby to the other, snipped off Robin's bright locks, smeared his little face with the ugly brown dye, and, hoping to quiet any terror he might feel, pushed a lollipop into his mouth. Then she placed him in her cousin's arms, who declared with a laugh that she would not know him anywhere from her own.

"Then go," said Helen, almost pushing her from the room.

The strange baby left behind cried feebly on the workhouse bed, and the workhouse baby shouted lustily as he was carried away; but crying babies were no anomaly, and Robin passed muster as the child who had been brought in half an hour before.

Thus did he escape from the workhouse, from its good and its evil, and thus did the world receive him to train him up as she thought best.

How many evil things were waiting for the pure and innocent child on that evil day! Grinding poverty, to reduce his strength; famine, to dim his bright young eyes; beggary, to teach him a thousand lessons in skulking and lying; crime, to make him the plague of the streets and the victim of the law—then the prison, perhaps the gallows; and all this because he had won a woman's love, and softened a woman's wild and breaking heart.

Would it not have been possible, just barely possible, that had a brother and sister sought out and taken hold of this brother and sister, they might have led them, through their love for one another, into a right way?

Then the voices calling Robin would have been, not poverty, but honest independence; not famine, but enough and to spare; not beggary, but the labour of his hands; not crime, but godliness; not the prison, but the home; not the gallows, but a crown of life. Alas! no brother proved himself brother, no Christian in a Christian land came to the rescue.

PART III.

WHAT WE DID NOT DO FOR HIM.

"'And I'll bid higher and higher,'
    Said Crime with wolfish grin,
'For I love to lead the children
    Through the pleasant paths of sin.'"
                                        CHARLES MACKAY.
                                                        —Souls of the Children.

"Every man you meet is your brother, and must be, for good or evil."—CHARLES KINGSLEY.

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.