On and on Robin trudged. Then at last he saw it! The tenements had now been left behind, and there it was—rising tall and stately into the night—the church he was looking for!
Six gas lights on the street around it palely lit up its stone walls and stained-glass arched windows. Rising up from the walls was a lofty spire, now only a shadow against the night sky. At the foot of the church was a lawn lined with spreading junipers and clipped boxwood, all protected by a low, wrought iron fence. Through a large opening in the fence, a brick walk led from the street to the massive carved oak doors of the church.
This was just the church, Robin felt as he walked up the brick path with Danny. Surely among all those who came to this beautiful place there would be someone who would love to have him. Robin would just set him down gently on the steps now and—but no! What was he thinking? Leave Danny there the rest of the night? Even with himself curled up somewhere nearby in the bushes, this was about as harebrained an idea as helping himself to the jewelry in Hawker’s precious drawer. More harebrained than that, if the truth be known. For in this case he might be risking Danny’s life, or his safety at the very least.
What he needed to do, Robin decided, was find some out-of-the-way little cubby at the side or back of the church where he could curl up and have Danny right with him. It would be difficult to lay Danny on the front steps of the church in broad daylight, but somehow he would find a way to do it. Danny still in his arms, Robin left the steps and went around a big circle of yews and boxwoods at the corner of the church to make a search for the cubby. But there was not one to be found at the side of the church. He began to think he would find none at all, and would have to curl up with Danny under one of the bushes. But he would not consider that until he had first gone all around the building.
When he rounded the back corner of the church, he found himself in near-total darkness. The street lamps gave just enough light to reveal a pair of iron railings rising up over brick steps that led down to a cellar door. A cellar door that dipped in enough to provide a cubby for Robin and Danny!
But before Robin could take the first step down, he saw a pinprick of light flickering on the pane of a small cellar window halfway down the back of the church. Robin held his breath. Was there someone in there with an oil lamp or a candle? Might that someone be coming through the door? Would he be caught there with Danny? And then the pinprick of light disappeared, and the window became once more only a small square of black glass like all the other windows.
Robin was very, very tired by this time. His arms ached from carrying Danny. His legs ached from walking. And might not his brain be tired enough to be playing tricks on him? He stood watching the dark window for several minutes, and the light never came back. Nor, for that matter, did anyone come through the door.
Once again he started down the steps, and this time went all the way to the bottom of the stairwell. There he discovered it was colder than it had been at the top. No longer warmed by walking, he felt the cold digging all the way through his jacket into his bones. He began to shiver uncontrollably. And what of Danny? He was now snug and warm in his blanket cocoon, but would that cocoon be warm enough down in that stone well during the next few hours, the coldest time of the night?
Why, oh why, could they not be on the other side of that splintered old door? In a sudden burst of despair, Robin grabbed the door handle and began to rattle it, somehow pressing down on the latch as he did. And the door swung open.
Whether someone had forgotten to lock the door, or whether it always remained unlocked, made no difference to Robin. Whichever it was, it was some kind of miracle. He stepped through the doorway, and he and Danny were instantly wrapped in a blanket of warm air. A furnace was clearly at work someplace in the cellar. Yes, this was definitely a place where the two of them could spend the night. Robin closed the door behind him.
With the closing of the door, the pale light from the nearby street lamp was shut out, and the two were now plunged into total darkness. But Robin had seen doors when they came in, doors to rooms. A room was the safest place to be. If they remained in the hallway, they might be discovered in the morning. But how to find a room without first lighting a candle? To do that meant laying Danny down on the floor and risk waking him. Robin did not want to use one of his two precious bottles of milk to put Danny back to sleep, for they might be needed in the morning. Well, why not feel his way around the wall? Was that not what he had done that very morning when he was collecting rents? He was getting to be an old hand at it.
Feeling along the wall with one hand, he started down the hallway. He found a door almost immediately, but it was locked. So was the second. And third. So he went on. But the very next doorway was not only not locked, it was actually open. He walked through it and immediately came to a dead stop. He had heard curious scrambling, scratching sounds. Rats? What else could it be? And then he heard whispered voices that most assuredly did not come from rats.
“Why didn’ you close th’ door behind yerself, jackass?” whispered one voice.
“And who was it fergot to lock the other door behind their-selves, double jackass?” whispered a second.
“Well, what was you doin’ anyways, wakin’ us all up?” came the first voice again.
“Had ter go ter the terlit, if you got ter know,” was the reply.
“Aw, shut up, both o’ you,” whispered a third voice, which then added warily, “Who’s there? Who is it who jist come in?”
Robin stood paralyzed. He could not even have said his name for his life.
“Whoever it is ain’t speakin’ ter us,” came yet another voice. “Whyn’t you jist light yer candle up again, Piggy, an’ let’s us have a look.”
A match was struck, and a candle flared up. And Robin found himself looking into some of the meanest faces and sharpest eyes he had ever been that close to in his life, lodged in the bodies of four assorted boys. If ever he had looked at ragged street boys, he was surely looking at them now. A whole nest of them!