flood of tender old
recollections that swept over her.

Memory went back to the years of her childhood when she had sat in this
pew every Sunday with her mother. Judith had come then, too, always
seeming grown up to Salome by reason of her ten years' seniority. Her
tall, dark, reserved father never came. Salome knew that the Carmody
people called him an infidel, and looked upon him as a very wicked man.
But he had not been wicked; he had been good and kind in his own odd
way.

The gently little mother had died when Salome was ten years old, but so
loving and tender was Judith's care that the child did not miss anything
out of her life. Judith Marsh loved her little sister with an intensity
that was maternal. She herself was a plain, repellent girl, liked by
few, sought after by no man; but she was determined that Salome should
have everything that she had missed--admiration, friendship, love. She
would have a vicarious youth in Salome's.

All went according to Judith's planning until Salome was eighteen,
and then trouble after trouble came. Their father, whom Judith had
understood and passionately loved, died; Salome's young lover was killed
in a railroad accident; and finally Salome herself developed symptoms of
the hip-disease which, springing from a trifling injury, eventually left
her a cripple. Everything possible was done for her. Judith, falling
heir to a snug little fortune by the death of the old aunt for whom she
was named, spared nothing to obtain the best medical skill, and in vain.
One and all, the great doctors failed.

Judith had borne her father's death bravely enough in spite of her agony
of grief; she had watched her sister pining and fading with the pain of
her broken heart without growing bitter; but when she knew at last that
Salome would never walk again save as she hobbled painfully about on
her crutch, the smouldering revolt in her soul broke its bounds, and
overflowed her nature in a passionate rebellion against the Being who
had sent, or had failed to prevent, these calamities. She did not rave
or denounce wildly; that was not Judith's way; but she never went to
church again, and it soon became an accepted fact in Carmody that Judith
Marsh was as rank an infidel as her father had been before her; nay,
worse, since she would not even allow Salome to go to church, and shut
the door in the minister's face when he went to see her.

"I should have stood out against her for conscience' sake," re