"Yes. They really are so, you know. Neither religion nor political economy can do anything for them, though efforts are made for the children. Poor, sodden, senseless, vicious lumps of misery, with the last spark of soul bred out of them--a sort of animated garbage that cumbers the ground and makes the air stink--given up as a bad job, and only wanted out of the way--from the first they were on my mind more than all the others. And when I saw them left to rot like that, I felt I might have a free hand." "And can you succeed where so many have failed?" "Oh, what I do doesn't involve success or failure. It's outside all that, just as they are. They're only brutes in human shape--hardly human shape either; but I have a feeling for brutes. I love horses and dogs--I can't bear to see things suffer. So that's all I do--just comfort them where I can, in their own way; not the parson's way--that's no use. I wouldn't mock them by speaking of religion--I suppose religion, as we know it, has had a large hand in making them what they are; and to go and tell them that God ordained their miserable pariah-dog lot would be rank blasphemy. I leave all that. I don't bother about their souls, because I know they haven't got any; I see their wretched bodies, and that's enough for me. It's something not to let them go out of the world without _ever_ knowing what it is to be physically comfortable. It eases my conscience, as a man who has never been hungry, except for the pleasure of it." "And do they blame you for that?" "They say I pauperise them and demoralise them," he answered, with a sudden laugh; "that I disorganise the schemes of the legitimate workers--that I outrage every principle of political economy. Well, I do _that_, certainly. But that I make things worse--that I retard the legitimate workers--I won't believe. If I do," he concluded, "I can't help it." "No," breathed Elizabeth, softly. "There's only one thing in which I and the legitimate workers are alike--everybody is alike in that, I suppose--the want of money. Only in the matter of beer and tobacco, what interest I could get on a few hundred pounds! What I could do in the way of filling empty stomachs and easing aches and pains if I had control of large means! What a good word 'means' is, isn't it? We want 'means' for all the ends we seek--no matter what they are." "I thought," said Elizabeth, "that you were rich. Mr. Westmoreland told us so."