"What are you thinking of?" asked his sister. "What misery have you been steeping yourself in to-day?"
"Misery indeed," he echoed. Then, meeting Katherine's eyes fixed upon him, he smiled. "Of course I see misery every day," he continued, "but I don't like to trouble you with too much of it. To-day I met with an unusually hard case, and I am going to ask you for some help toward righting it."
"Tell me what you want," said Katherine.
"Are you sure the story is genuine?" asked Miss Payne.
"I am quite sure. I went into Bow Street Police Court to-day, intending to speak to the sitting magistrate about some children respecting whom he had asked for information, when I was attracted by the face of a woman who was being examined; she was poorly clad, but evidently respectable—like a better class of needle-woman. I never saw a face express such despair. It seemed she had been caught in the act of stealing two loaves from the shop of a baker. The poor creature did not deny it. Her story was that she had been for some years a widow; that she had supported herself and two children by needle-work and machine-work. Illness had impoverished her and diminished her connection, other workers having been taken on in her absence. In short she had been caught in that terrible maelstrom of misfortune from which no one can escape without a helping hand. Her sewing machine was seized for rent; one article after another of furniture and clothes went for food; at last nothing was left. She roamed the city, reduced to beg at last, and striving to make up her mind to go to the workhouse, the cry of the hungry children she had left in her ears. At several bakers' shops she had petitioned for food and had been refused. At last, entering one while the shop-girl's back was turned, she snatched a couple of small loaves and rushed out into the arms of a policeman, who had seen the theft through the window."
"And would the magistrate punish her for this?" asked Katherine, eagerly.
"He must. Theft is theft, whatever the circumstances that seem to extenuate it. Nothing, no need, gives a right to take what does not belong to you. But, for all that, I am certain the poor creature has been honest hitherto, and deserves help. She is committed to prison for stealing, and I promised her I would look to her children; so I have been to see them, and took them to the Children's Refuge that you were kind enough to subscribe to, Miss Liddell. To-morrow we must do what we can for the mother. I imagine it is worse than death to her to be put in prison."
"I do not wonder at it," ejaculated Miss Payne. "And in spite of what you say, Bertie, I should not like to give any materials to be made up by a woman who deliberately stole in broad daylight."
"I do not see that the light made any difference," returned Bertie; and they plunged into a warm discussion. Katherine soon lost the sense of what they were saying. Her heart was throbbing as if a sudden stunning blow had been dealt her, and the words, "Theft is theft, whatever the circumstances that seem to extenuate it," beat as if with a sledge-hammer on her brain.
If for a theft, value perhaps sixpence, this poor woman, who had been driven to it by the direst necessity, was exposed to trial, to the gaze of careless lookers-on, to loss of character, to the exposure of her sore want, to the degradation of imprisonment, what should be awarded to her, Katherine Liddell, an educated gentlewoman, for stealing a large fortune from its rightful owner, and that, too, under no pressure of immediate distress? True, she firmly believed that had her uncle not been struck down by death he would have left her a large portion of it; that she had a better right to it than a stranger. Still that did not alter the fact that she was a thief. If every one thus dared to infringe the rights of others, what law, what security would remain?