On her way, a strong hand is
put out to save her. It is that of a gigantic young clergyman, who
allows her to think that she has decoyed him to her room, but who
really goes there to endeavor to turn her from her course of life. She
scorns his exhortations, and attempts to browbeat him; but she finds
him ready for a row upon the spot. He offers to fight her crowd of
bullies singlehanded, and when she locks the door upon him, twists the
lock off, hasp and all, with a turn of his wrist. Although they
part,--he none the worse, she none the better, for the interview,--it
is not without fruits; for he leaves her his address, and when, after
being reduced to the lowest depths of degradation and brought to the
last endurable pinch of suffering, she determines, at the death-bed of
a repentant companion, to reform at any cost, and does set her face
upward, and is beaten back and trodden under foot by the righteously
uncharitable of her own sex, she thinks of her big clergyman, seeks him
out, and by his instrumentality is taken into the country, and made the
mistress of a school in his parish. Here the friends of her youth find
her, forgive her, and cherish her; and she receives a proposal of
marriage from an estimable and wealthy farmer, who persists in his
suit, even after she has told him of her former life, and after the
small-pox, caught on a ministration of mercy, has harrowed all the
beauty from her face.
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