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.