“I shan’t faint, Dinah,” said the child, firmly; “and why shouldn’t I hear it?  It an’t so much for me to hear it, as for poor Prue to suffer it.”

“Lor sakes! it isn’t for sweet, delicate young ladies, like you,—­these yer stories isn’t; it’s enough to kill ’em!”

Eva sighed again, and walked up stairs with a slow and melancholy step.

Miss Ophelia anxiously inquired the woman’s story.  Dinah gave a very garrulous version of it, to which Tom added the particulars which he had drawn from her that morning.

“An abominable business,—­perfectly horrible!” she exclaimed, as she entered the room where St. Clare lay reading his paper.

“Pray, what iniquity has turned up now?” said he.

“What now? why, those folks have whipped Prue to death!” said Miss Ophelia, going on, with great strength of detail, into the story, and enlarging on its most shocking particulars.

“I thought it would come to that, some time,” said St. Clare, going on with his paper.

“Thought so!—­an’t you going to do anything about it?” said Miss Ophelia.  “Haven’t you got any selectmen, or anybody, to interfere and look after such matters?”

“It’s commonly supposed that the property interest is a sufficient guard in these cases.  If people choose to ruin their own possessions, I don’t know what’s to be done.  It seems the poor creature was a thief and a drunkard; and so there won’t be much hope to get up sympathy for her.”

“It is perfectly outrageous,—­it is horrid, Augustine!  It will certainly bring down vengeance upon you.”

“My dear cousin, I didn’t do it, and I can’t help it; I would, if I could.  If low-minded, brutal people will act like themselves, what am I to do? they have absolute control; they are irresponsible despots.  There would be no use in interfering; there is no law that amounts to anything practically, for such a case.  The best we can do is to shut our eyes and ears, and let it alone.  It’s the only resource left us.”

“How can you shut your eyes and ears?  How can you let such things alone?”

“My dear child, what do you expect?  Here is a whole class,—­debased, uneducated, indolent, provoking,—­put, without any sort of terms or conditions, entirely into the hands of such people as the majority in our world are; people who have neither consideration nor self-control, who haven’t even an enlightened regard to their own interest,—­for that’s the case with the largest half of mankind.  Of course, in a community so organized, what can a man of honorable and humane feelings do, but shut his eyes all he can, and harden his heart?  I can’t buy every poor wretch I see.  I can’t turn knight-errant, and undertake to redress every individual case of wrong in such a city as this.  The most I can do is to try and keep out of the way of it.”

St. Clare’s fine countenance was for a moment overcast; he said,