‘My Marian,’ I made answer, grave and sad, ‘The priest who stole a lamb to offer him, Was still a thief. And if a woman steals (Through God’s own barrier-hedges of true love, Which fence out licence in securing love) A child like this, that smiles so in her face, She is no mother, but a kidnapper, And he’s a dismal orphan ... not a son; Whom all her kisses cannot feed so full He will not miss hereafter a pure home To live in, a pure heart to lean against, A pure good mother’s name and memory To hope by, when the world grows thick and bad, And he feels out for virtue.’ ‘Oh,’ she smiled With bitter patience, ‘the child takes his chance,— Not much worse off in being fatherless Than I was, fathered. He will say, belike, His mother was the saddest creature born; He’ll say his mother lived so contrary To joy, that even the kindest, seeing her, Grew sometimes almost cruel: he’ll not say She flew contrarious in the face of God With bat-wings of her vices. Stole my child,— My flower of earth, my only flower on earth, My sweet, ray beauty!’ ... Up she snatched the child, And, breaking on him in a storm of tears, Drew out her long sobs from their shivering roots, Until he took it for a game, and stretched His feet, and flapped his eager arms like wings, And crowed and gurgled through his infant laugh: ‘Mine, mine,’ she said; ‘I have as sure a right As any glad proud mother in the world, Who sets her darling down to cut his teeth Upon her church-ring. If she talks of law, I talk of law! I claim my mother-dues By law,—the law which now is paramount; The common law, by which the poor and weak Are trodden underfoot by vicious men, And loathed for ever after by the good. Let pass! I did not filch ... I found the child.’