‘Right?’ she cried. Then she turned on the others. ‘Out of this!’ she said. ‘Out of this, every one of you. . . . As if there wasn’t enough shame and sorrow in this house without your mocking it with your drink and your music. Out of it, I say!’ And she waved her arms as though she were driving cattle. ‘Now don’t take on so, ma’am,’ said Wigan Joe mildly. ‘It was all meant for the best. Can’t you let the man forget his troubles? It’s a poor heart that never rejoices!’ ‘Don’t speak to me!’ she cried angrily. ‘To think that you have the face to come here, you that led him astray with your drink and your bawdiness! To come and make a mock of his own father!’ Her eyes fell on Abner, who had risen to go to the door. ‘And that man!’ she cried, whipping herself up into a white paroxysm of rage. ‘That man who, if all had their rights, would be in the dock and in the prison where my son is lying! That’s the man he’s suffering for! That’s the serpent he took into his bosom!’ She stood before Abner spitting like a snake herself. ‘Never let me see your face again!’ she cried. ‘Never come nigh this door. It was the devil that sent you to bring trouble on a good Christian house!’ Again Wigan Joe protested the innocence of his intentions, while the old man sat nodding by the fire as if the storm had broken without him knowing it. ‘Don’t talk to me,’ she said, ‘with the liquor in your breath. Go away and leave us alone.’ Abner went out. The other men were standing on the pavement laughing. Mick implored him to go on with them to the Pound House where Mr Hind and Susie had by this time presumably arrived, but he shook his head and took the road to Wolfpits, pondering, through the darkness of night, on the curious turn which his fortune had taken.