There was more along these lines which sent Bob away with some questioning as to himself. Being of a law-respecting nature, he was anxious not to uphold the transgressor to anything like a danger point. And he ran that risk. Having undertaken to help Teddy on Jennie’s account, his heart had gone out beyond what he expected to the boy himself. It was the first time he had ever been in contact with a prisoner, the first time he had ever come face to face with a lone individual against whom all the organized forces of the world were focused in condemnation. His impulse being to range himself on the weaker side, he had, in a measure, so ranged himself. He had told Teddy that he stood by him, and would continue to stand by him through thick and thin. But was he right? Had he shown the proper severity? Hadn’t he been sloppy and sentimental, without sufficiently remembering that a man who had killed another man was not to be handled as a pet? It was not common sense to treat the breaker of laws as if he hadn’t broken them or as if his punishment had made him a sympathetic figure. Too facile a pity might easily become a sin against the community’s best standards, and by putting himself on the weaker side a man might find himself on the worse one. Even the fact that the wrongdoer was a relative ought not to blind the eyes to his being a wrongdoer. It was his duty as a citizen, Bob argued, to support the charter of the Rights of Man as set forth in the Old Testament—thou shalt not kill—thou shalt not steal—the ideal of the New Testament, "Neither was there among them any that lacked, for they had all things common," never having been called to his attention. As to Teddy’s being a criminal born, he was not sure. Perhaps he was. Such "sports" appeared even from the most respectable stock. There was a dark tradition, never mentioned now except between Edith and himself, of a Collingham—they were not sure of the relationship—who had died in jail somewhere in the West. Of the Follett stock Bob knew nothing. Jennie was the other half of himself; but such affinities, he was sheepishly inclined to feel, dated from other worlds and other planes of existence, though finding a manifestation in this one. But it was Jennie who gave him the lead he was in search of.