ha, hav' yer got no sponds?" She didn't seem to see
me no more, nor hear me, and I goes on louder like, "Say, Semantha!
where yer goin' to? what yer goin' ter do now?" and, Boss, she done the
toughest thing I ever seen. She jes' slowly lifted up her hands and
looked at 'em, looked good and long, like they were strange to her, and
then jes' as slow she turns 'em over, they were bare and empty, and the
palms was up, and she spreads the fingers wide apart and moves 'em a
bit, and then without raisin' up her eyes, she jes' smiles a little
slow, slow smile.

"'And then she turned 'round and walked away without nary a word at all;
but, Boss, her shoulders sagged down, and her head kind of trembled, and
she dragged her feet along jes' like an old, old woman, what was too
tired to live. I was skeered like, and thought I'd come here and tell
you, but I looked back to watch her. 'Twas almost dark then, and when
she came to the crossin', the wind was blowin' so she could hardly
stand, but she stopped awhile and looked down one street, then she
looked down the other street, and then she lifts up her face right to
the sky the longest time of all, and so I looks up ter see was ther'
anything there; but ther' wasn't nothin' but them dirty, low-hangin'
clouds as looks so rainy and so lonesome. And then right of a suddent
she gives a scream; but no, not a scream, a groan and a scream together.
It made my blood turn cold, I tell yer; and she trows both her empty
hands out from her, and says as plain as I do now, Boss, "My God, it is
too much! I cannot, cannot bear it!" Then she draw'd herself up quite
tall, shut her hands tight before her, and walked as fast as feet could
carry her straight toward the river.'"

And that was the last that he, my friend, had ever heard of poor
Semantha. I tried to dry my falling tears, but he dried them more
effectually by remarking:--

"Yes, she was a bright, promising, true-hearted girl; but you see she
went wrong, and the sinner has to pay both here and hereafter."

"Don't," I hotly cried. "Don't go on! don't! Sin? sin? Don't hurl that
word at her, the embodiment of self-sacrifice! Sin? where there is no
law, there can be no sin. And who had taught her anything? She was a
heathen. So far as one person can be the cause of another person's
wrong-doing, so far was Semantha's mother the guilty cause of Semantha's
loving fall. She was a heathen. She had been taught just one law--that
she was always to se