Watts smiled at them, shaking his head. "Oh, I know it's a slow way, a tedious way, a tame way, but unless we all want to stay forever 'under the law' with all the slavery and lack of progress that connotes, we must be better disciplined, better educated and more intelligent people. We must stay 'under the law' until slowly and painfully and all together we shall come to a consciousness of more Christian and more intelligent laws to which we can all subscribe." Minga drove her hands into her front pockets. "I want justice," said the girl, crisply. "So do I," was the lawyer's prompt reply. "I want it, but I seldom see it." "I want the justice that would give Terry another chance." "I want justice for the old cobbler whom Terry killed." He considered her. "There's only just one way to keep the Terrys of the world out of jail." She faced him, held by his magnetism, yet unbelieving. Watts dominated her as he had that night on the mountain. "Just by being better men and women ourselves. The criminal is the man or woman who analyzes and defies society, and in some cases his arraignment of society is just." Then, with a voice that thrilled with conviction, Shipman said to them: "Never lose your passion for justice, for the under-dog; never cease hating smug, secure, complacent things, and never relax in your efforts to be more intelligent men and women. I am willing to grant you that there can be no essential justice in life as long as there is no proper understanding of Terry's temptations, his mental and bodily defects. To that extent we, as much as he, are to blame for his crime and we must never cease to agonize for him and for such as he. It is our duty to raise ourselves through education and our civilized dreams of justice to enact laws that shall protect all the Terrys from themselves, give them safety against their wayward impulses; understanding of the disease of their crime; until that time comes," finished Watts, "we are all under the law." It was with a wistfulness the others could not understand that the man said these things. Manfully, he tried to curb this young despair while he gloried in and respected it. Some day Watts knew they would forget this noble passion. They, like him, would grow old, mature in worldly wisdom, willing to throw much into the terrible human discard, where so much youth, beauty, hope and honor die in order that the artificial fabric, called society, may be statically preserved! Minga turned to Dunstan. "Then Terry," she said under her breath, "has no friends but us." The two looked at each other meaningly. They turned slowly toward their roadster. They sprang in; the long shape backed and snorted and left an angry trail of dust on the summer highway. CHAPTER XXI AUTHORITY