n her: that for three years
she should be imprisoned.... This, despite her innocence. She had
endured much--miserably much!--for honesty's sake. There wrought the
irony of fate. She had endured bravely for honesty's sake. And the end
of it all was shame unutterable. There was nought left her save a wild
dream of revenge against the world that had martyrized her. "Vengeance
is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord."... The admonition could not
touch her now. Why should she care for the decrees of a God who had
abandoned her!

There had been nothing in the life of Mary Turner, before the
catastrophe came, to distinguish it from many another. Its most
significant details were of a sordid kind, familiar to poverty. Her
father had been an unsuccessful man, as success is esteemed by this
generation of Mammon-worshipers. He was a gentleman, but the trivial
fact is of small avail to-day. He was of good birth, and he was the
possessor of an inherited competence. He had, as well, intelligence, but
it was not of a financial sort.

So, little by little, his fortune became shrunken toward nothingness,
by reason of injudicious investments. He married a charming woman, who,
after a brief period of wedded happiness, gave her life to the birth
of the single child of the union, Mary. Afterward, in his distress over
this loss, Ray Turner seemed even more incompetent for the management of
business affairs. As the years passed, the daughter grew toward maturity
in an experience of ever-increasing penury. Nevertheless, there was no
actual want of the necessities of life, though always a woful lack of
its elegancies. The girl was in the high-school, when her father finally
gave over his rather feeble effort of living. Between parent and child,
the intimacy had been unusually close. At his death, the father left her
a character well instructed in the excellent principles that had been
his own. That was his sole legacy to her. Of worldly goods, not the
value of a pin.

Yet, measured according to the stern standards of adversity, Mary was
fortunate. Almost at once, she procured a humble employment in the
Emporium, the great department store owned by Edward Gilder. To be
sure, the wage was infinitesimal, while the toil was body-breaking
soul-breaking. Still, the pittance could be made to sustain life, and
Mary was blessed with both soul and body to sustain much. So she merged
herself in the army of workers--in the vast battalion of those that giv