penitentiaries, not homes; I won't go to any of them. Your piety
isn't worth much, for though you read in your Bible how the Lord
treated a poor soul like me, yet when I stretch out my hand to you
for help, not one of all you virtuous, Christian women dare take it
and keep me from a life that's worse than hell."

As she spoke Rachel flung out her hand with a half-defiant gesture,
and Christie took it. That touch, full of womanly compassion, seemed
to exorcise the desperate spirit that possessed the poor girl in her
despair, for, with a stifled exclamation, she sunk down at
Christie's feet, and lay there weeping in all the passionate
abandonment of love and gratitude, remorse and shame. Never had
human voice sounded so heavenly sweet to her as that which broke the
silence of the room, as this one friend said, with the earnestness
of a true and tender heart:

"Mrs. King, if you send her away, I must take her in; for if she
does go back to the old life, the sin of it will lie at our door,
and God will remember it against us in the end. Some one must trust
her, help her, love her, and so save her, as nothing else will.
Perhaps I can do this better than you,--at least, I'll try; for even
if I risk the loss of my good name, I could bear that better than
the thought that Rachel had lost the work of these hard years for
want of upholding now. She shall come home with me; no one there
need know of this discovery, and I will take any work to her that
you will give me, to keep her from want and its temptations. Will
you do this, and let me sew for less, if I can pay you for the
kindness in no other way?"

Poor Mrs. King was "much tumbled up and down in her own mind;" she