"Dogs!" echoed Ned Blackborough in the same tone. "I would far liefer give it to the dogs than to you--you men who will have the handling of it. It is you who starved those poor children, not I. Their fathers could keep them in comfort for five-and-twenty shillings a week; you made them stand for out six-and-twenty--as if it mattered--as if money, physical comfort, even freedom, counted for anything in a man's search for happiness. That----." He pulled himself up quivering, feeling the uselessness of speech. "Come, Woods!" he said, "it is time I left this Temple of Mammon! Good-day, gentlemen." "That is a clear waste of a hundred thousand pounds," mourned Mr. Woods as they crossed the courtyard; "you can't get beyond human nature, my lord. Each man will naturally go for that gold, the cleverest of them will get it, and so capital will re-arise out of its own ashes. You must begin further down--with the children." "Set up a school, eh? Woods, in which they would be taught the truth--that work and play are merely interchangeable terms for occupation. Hullo! What's up?" A small crowd of women, mostly carrying babies, but a few of them carrying baskets, stood at the gates blocking the way. Beyond them waited the motor-car, the chauffeur standing at the crank ready to start. Ned Blackborough walked on until he nearly touched the first woman. She was better dressed than the rest, but who for all that had a coarse, violent face. "Do you want anything?" he asked quietly. "If you don't, you might let me pass." "Do we want!" she began in a rhetorical voice. "Yes! we want the bread you have stole from our children." "Why not give them some of your husband's dinner?" he replied, pointing to her basket, on the top of which lay several knives and forks. There was a titter, for she was, in truth, carrying refreshment for Mr. Green and his colleagues. She flushed scarlet. "My husband!" she echoed. "Yes! where is the money you have stole from our husbands? But you'll find that we aren't slaves like the ones you drove in the Indies before you were kicked out! The British workpeople are not to be treated like black niggers or Chinese coolies." "Good God! woman," cried Ned, losing patience, "if you have nothing better to say than to trump up the last scurrilous article in the _Taskmaster_--Here! Woods, follow on--I'm not going to be stopped." In an instant they were the centre of a band of excited women, the next they were in the car, and the _chauffeur_ was running back to take his seat. "I don't want to hurt you," called Ned as he turned on power, "but if some of you don't stand back there will be an accident!"