He left the restaurants, and wandered through Trafalgar Square into Piccadilly. From the Circus he walked on until he found himself in that part where his path lay between the Park at one side, and the houses of the great and wealthy on the other. The winter night, the long, long winter night, was falling now, and so also was the snow. His neighbours, his brothers, were in those houses, adding comfort to comfort, luxury to luxury; but adding also in their neglect of him, and such as him, sin to sin. He was so hungry by this time that he was almost in despair. Should he run up one of those great flights of steps, and ring boldly at one of those ponderous bells, and demand food, just even a piece, a morsel of bread, to keep soul and body together? No, he could not venture; he was too weak to stand the angry repulse from the liveried footman who would answer his summons. He wandered on. Suddenly a cry, a baby cry, smote on his ear, and peering through the darkness--the street lamps were not lit yet--he saw a little girl dressed in a white fur jacket and fur cap standing and sobbing on the pavement. "Ma-_ma_--Ma-_ma_!" sobbed the baby. Robin bent over her. "Wot's h'up, little 'un?" he said in his gentlest tone. The child stopped crying, surveyed her questioner gravely from head to foot, hesitated, but finally, after a long gaze into his face, stretched up her arms, saying coaxingly-- "Take me 'ome, wagged boy." PART V. _HIS FATHER AND OURS TO THE RESCUE._ "Of the hearts that daily break, Of the tears that hourly fall, Of the many, many troubles of life That grieve this earthly ball-- Disease and Hunger and Pain and Want, Now I dreamt of them all! "Alas! I have walked through life Too heedless where I trod; Nay, helping to trample my fellow-man, And fill the burial sod; Forgetting that even the sparrow falls Not unmarked of God." --HOOD. "Do not deceive yourselves about the little offensive children in the street. If they be offensive to you, they are not to Him who made them. 'Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones, for I say unto you, Their angels do always behold the face of your Father in Heaven. It is not the will of your Father in Heaven that one of these little ones should perish.'"--CHARLES KINGSLEY. CHAPTER I. _A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM._