"
"Woe's me! how is it in my power?" asked Jeanie, in despondency.
"Hearken to me!--You have sense--you can apprehend my meaning--I will
trust you. Your sister is innocent of the crime charged against her"
"Thank God for that!" said Jeanie.
"Be still and hearken!--The person who assisted her in her illness
murdered the child; but it was without the mother's knowledge or
consent--She is therefore guiltless, as guiltless as the unhappy
innocent, that but gasped a few minutes in this unhappy world--the
better was its hap, to be so soon at rest. She is innocent as that
infant, and yet she must die--it is impossible to clear her of the law!"
"Cannot the wretches be discovered, and given up to punishment?" said
Jeanie.
"Do you think you will persuade those who are hardened in guilt to die to
save another?--Is that the reed you would lean to?"
"But you said there was a remedy," again gasped out the terrified young
woman.
"There is," answered the stranger, "and it is in your own hands. The blow
which the law aims cannot be broken by directly encountering it, but it
may be turned aside. You saw your sister during the period preceding the
birth of her child--what is so natural as that she should have mentioned
her condition to you? The doing so would, as their cant goes, take the
case from under the statute, for it removes the quality of concealment.
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