Lizzie’s voice was so deep that it startled. On the threshold of the little entry she stood, tall, black robed, almost unearthly. At the same time Pansy, who had also come downstairs, crept toward Flynn with a low, vicious growl. Both men stumbled to their feet, awed by something in Lizzie which was more than the majesty of grief. "Ah, now, we’re sorry to disturb you, ma’am, my friend and me. We know you’ve had trouble, and we wouldn’t be for wantin’ to bring more into a house where there’s enough of it already. But when things is duty, they can’t be put by just because they’re unpleasant—" "Has my son been taking money from Collingham & Law’s?" The spectral voice gave force to the directness of the question. Abandoning the hint of professional bullying he had taken toward Jennie, Flynn, with Pansy’s teeth not six inches from his calf, went a pace or two toward the figure in the entry. "Has he been takin’ money, that boy of yours? Well now, and have you any reason to think so, ma’am?" "None—apart from what I hoped." "Momma!" Jennie sprang to her mother, grasping her by the arm. While Jackman stood like an iron figure in the background, Flynn, always with Pansy’s teeth keeping some six inches from his calf, advanced still another pace or two. "Ah, now, that’s a quare thing, ma’am, for the mother of a lad to say—that she hoped he was takin’ money." "Oh, don’t mind her," Jennie pleaded. "She hasn’t been just—just _right_—ever since my father died." "I didn’t think of it at first," Lizzie stated, in a lifeless voice. "I believed what he told us, that he was making money on the side. It was only latterly that I began to suspect that he wasn’t; and now I hope he took it from the bank." "But, good God! ma’am, why? Don’t you know he’ll be caught—and what he’ll get for it?" "Oh, he’d get that just the same, if you mean suffering and punishment and a life of misery. All I want is that he should be the first to strike. Since he’s got to go down before brute power—" "Brute power of law and order, ma’am, if you’ll allow me to remind you." She uttered a little joyless laugh. "Law and order! You’ll excuse me for laughing, won’t you? I’ve heard so much of them—" "And you’re likely to hear a lot more, if this is the way o’ things." "Oh, I expect to. They’ll do me to death, as they’ll do you, and as they do everyone else. Law and order are the golden images set up for us to bow down to and worship as gods; and we get the reward that’s always dealt out to those who believe in falsehood." Flynn appealed to both Jennie and Jackman. "I never heard no one talk like that, whether dotty or sane." "If it was real law and order," Lizzie continued, with the same passionless intonation, "that would be another thing. But it isn’t. It’s faked law and order. It’s a plaster on a sore, meant to hide the ugly thing and not to heal it. It’s to keep bad bad by pretending that it’s good—"