n sentences, sometimes
unfinished, as her agony returned upon her and would not let her go on.

I could not feel any scorn or contempt for her; I could as soon have
looked down on a martyr burning at the stake for an act in which I did
not believe. She was like a dumb beast tied in a burning stall, only
able to moan and cry out and endure.

I have often thought that to any one who had not seen and heard it, the
first thing she said might seem comic.

"Jacob," she said, with her face buried in my breast, "they've got it
worked around so--I'm goin' to have a baby!"

But when you think of the circumstances; the poor, pretty, inexperienced
girl; of that poor slack-twisted family; of her defenselessness in that
great house; of the experienced and practised and conscienceless
seducer into whose hands she had fallen--when you think of all this, I
do not see how you can fail to see how the words were wrung from her as
a statement of the truth. "They" meant all the forces which had been too
strong for her, not the least, her own weakness--for weakness is one of
the most powerful forces in our affairs. "They had got it worked
around"--as if the very stars in their courses had conspired to destroy
her. I had no impulse to laugh at her strange way of stating it, as if
she had had nothing to do with it herself: instead, I felt the tears of
sympathy roll down my face upon her hair of rich brown.

"That's why my folks have throwed me off," she went on. "But I ain't
bad, Jacob. I ain't bad. Take me, and save me! I'll always be good to
you, Jake; I'll wash your feet with my hair! I'll kiss them! I'll eat
the crusts from the table an' be glad, for I love you, Jacob. I've loved
you ever since I saw you. If I have been untrue to you, it was because I
was overcome, and you never looked twice at me, and I thought I was to
be a great lady. Now I'll be mud, trod on by every beast that walks, an'
rooted over by the hawgs, unless you save me. I'll work my fingers to
the bone f'r you, Jacob, to the bone. You're my only hope. For Christ's
sake let me hope a little longer!"

The thought that she was coming to me to save her from the results of
her own sin never came into my mind. I only saw her as a lost woman,
cast off even by her miserable family, whose only claim to
respectability was their having kept themselves from the one depth into
which she had fallen. I thought again of that wretch who had been kind
to me in Buffalo, and of poor Row