week, on one of the rare occasions when they were permitted to talk to
each other through the grating which separated the men's visiting
quarters from the women's, the young wife told her husband that she
made up her mind to swear that she had stolen the overcoat. What could
she do if he were sent to prison and she were left free? She was
afraid to go to his people and could not possibly go back to hers. In
spite of his protest, that very night she sent for the state's
attorney and made a full confession, giving her age as eighteen in the
hope of making her testimony more valuable. From that time on they
stuck to the lie through the indictment, the trial and her conviction.
Apparently it had seemed to him only a well-arranged plot until he had
visited the penitentiary the day before, and had really seen her
piteous plight. Remorse had seized him at last, and he was ready to
make every restitution. She, however, had no notion of giving up--on
the contrary, as she realized more clearly what prison life meant, she
was daily more determined to spare him the experience. Her letters,
written in the unformed hand of a child--for her husband had himself
taught her to read and write--were filled with a riot of
self-abnegation, the martyr's joy as he feels the iron enter the
flesh. Thus had an illiterate, neglected girl through sheer devotion
to a worthless sort of young fellow inclined to drink, entered into
that noble company of martyrs.

When girls "go wrong" what happens? How has this tremendous force,
valuable and necessary for the foundation of the family, become
misdirected? When its manifestations follow the legitimate channels of
wedded life we call them praiseworthy; but there are other
manifestations quite outside the legal and moral channels which yet
compel our admiration.