"But if you go into their store, they will know you, and watch you, and you will get caught again."
"Then I'll have it out of some of the rest of them."
"How will that spite the ones that sent you here?"
"They're all alike. It won't make any difference which I take it from."
"They are not all alike, any more than you and I are alike because we, just now, happen to be in the same place. If you go out of here and steal again, you spite yourself, and the punishment for it will fall upon your own head, and on the heads of those poor children that you have brought into the world. Those poor little things that are bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh. Does not the mother-heart melt within you in pity for those children when they come to find out that their mother is a thief? O Sarah, if you are not afraid of God's judgment, which is the most fearful thing that can overtake you, let your children be in your thoughts when you go to take what is not your own, and turn you from your wicked purpose."
"She tells ye the truth," said McMullins. "And only think of me! Here I am, the mither of five beautiful chilter as ye ever set eyes on. And me heart is sick after them. The lads are with the father, and the little girls are in the alms house. Only think what a mither I am! I have ruined meself for life, and damned me soul to hell forever."
"I don't believe anything about a hell," said Lissett. But she moved uneasily on her seat. It was easy to shake off the terror at the end of her tongue; but it was to be seen that she was haunted by a fear of it in a conscience not quite seared.
"Indade, there is. The praist has always told me that, and I've got it already whin I think what a mither I've been. God pity! God pity me!" This she said amidst sobs and tears.
"What kind of a wife were you, McMullins?"
"I don't care so much for the old man, he used to bate me sometimes, and he says he'll never live wid me any more. The minister went to see him for me, and he told him I had disgraced him; that he was fond of me once, but I had disgraced him, and put the chilter in the almshouse, and he would live wid me no more. Do you think he will? Only think what a miserable wife I've been! God pity me!"