Mrs. McPhillip had awakened from her reverie as soon as her husband spoke. She had started up and gripped her breast over her heart with a dumb exclamation. Then she rubbed her two eyes hurriedly and looked at him. As soon as she saw him, her eyes grew dim again and her body subsided into the chair from which it had risen slightly. “Jack,” she cried in an agonized voice, “Jack! Jack, leave him alone. He was Frankie’s friend. He was a friend of me dead boy’s. Let him alone. What’s done is done.” “Be damned to that for a story,” cried Jack. His voice was weak and jerky, just like the voice of his dead son. “A friend d’ye call him? What kind of friend d’ye call that waster that never did a day’s work in his life? That ex-policeman! He was even driven outa the police. That’s fine company for yer son, Maggie. It’s the likes o’ him that’s brought Frankie to his death an’ destruction. Them an’ their revolutions. It’s in Russia they should be where they could act the cannibal as much as they like, instead of leadin’ good honest Irishmen astray. Why don’t they get out of here and go back to England where they came from, with their rotten gold, gev to them be the Orangemen to turn Ireland into an uproar, so that the Freemasons could step in again and capture it. Ah-h-h-h, I’d like to get me fingers on yer throat, ye——” He was rushing across the floor at Gypo, but the three men had jumped up and caught him. They held him back. Gypo stared at him, as if in perplexity, without moving. But the muscles of his shoulders stiffened, almost unconsciously. His eyes wandered slowly from the fuming husband to the sobbing wife, who had again turned to the fire. Then the people from the parlour rushed into the kitchen, attracted by the shouting. They were headed by Mary McPhillip, the daughter of the house. She was a handsome young woman, with a full figure, plump, with red cheeks, a firm jaw, auburn hair cropped in the current fashion, blue eyes that had a “sensible” look in them and a rather large mouth that was opened wide by her excitement. Every bit of her except her mouth belonged to an average Irishwoman of the middle class. The mouth was a product of the slums. Its size and its propensity for disclosing the state of the mind by exaggerated movement, which is the hallmark of the slum girl, belied the neat elegance of the rest of the body and of all the clothes. She was still dressed just as she had arrived from the office, in a smart navy-blue costume which she had made herself. The skirt was rather short, in the current fashion, and she stood with her feet fairly wide apart, in the arrogant posture of a woman of good family. Her well-shaped calves were covered with thin black silk stockings. But she had her hands on her hips, unconsciously, as she stood in front of the indiscriminate crowd that had followed her in from the parlour, to find out what had caused the disturbance in the kitchen. “What’s the row about, father?” she said.