The result of this chance capture was that we had abundant evidence against Jess and another, and I went for her with the greatest of pleasure. She was in the “kitchen” of the place among a crowd of her kind when I entered, and it needed only a motion of my finger and a nod of my head to chase the merriment from her face, and bring her slowly across the floor to my side. It is not usual for me to be communicative, but on the present occasion I was elated, and said in reply to her sullen inquiry— “It’s that affair of the commercial traveller. It’s all blown, and you are in for five years at least. Jim White is in the office already, and the £20 bank note with him.” Jess seemed struck in a heap with the news. She flashed deadly pale and sank feebly into a chair, with her bold, bright eyes becoming shiny with tears. “Where’s Dickie?” she faintly articulated to some of the silent onlookers, and, fearing treachery, I snatched out a double brass whistle which can be heard a whole street off, and swiftly raised it to my lips. “Stop! you needn’t,” Jess quickly interposed, understanding the motion. “Dickie’s only my laddie. Oh, what will become of him when I’m away?” Dickie was said to be playing down on the street, so I told her we might see him as we left. Jess began to cry bitterly—Jess! whom I believed to have not one genuine tear in her! and thus we descended the stairs together. In the street a ragged and unkempt boy of seven or eight was brought to her side, and she clutched him to her breast, kissing his smudged face with a passionate fervour which gave me quite a fresh insight into her character. The boy resembled her in features, and would have passed for good-looking had he only been washed and dressed up a little. “What’s to ’come o’ my bairn?—oh, what’s to ’come o’ my bairn?” wailed Jess, and the boy began to howl in concert, and I saw that it would be useless to try to separate them just then. “Oh, he’ll be looked after as he has often been before,” I carelessly answered. “He’ll go to the Poorhouse. He’ll be safer there than under your care—and cleaner.” The remark did not appear to console Jess in the least. Dickie was her only child, and the whole strength of her nature seemed concentrated in her love of that boy. I was astonished, and speculated on the matter all the way to the office, quietly wondering what “line of business” that same gutter child was destined to torment me and others by adopting, when he should be a few years older. I had made a pretty shrewd guess at Jess’s sentence, for the list of previous convictions was so strong against her that she was awarded exactly the number of years I had named. I was convinced by that time that she did not grieve over the punishment at all, but over her separation from her child, and I remember thinking—“We are poor judges of one another. What a strong hold could be taken of that woman through that child, if one only knew how to use the power.”