The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1910-03-19
A RASH JUDGMENT.

,ouiUg one Dy inc udIIdGIoIl'
Two Young girls, strangers in New York. were
-..oloved some forty years ago in a large dress
e-ai;nr establishment where, as is apt to be the
u 46e hours of work were very irregular. When
CO. hall dress had to be finished, the girls were
GGancntv kept sewing until midnight and the two
ters with whom my story deals dreaded such
s;ons more than most of their companions, since
= was a long distance to the room they shared in
+nenent house. and they disliked entering alone
g late at night They were excellent Catholics,
modest and retiring; but for these very reasons they
Lod drawn down upon themselves the ill-will or
oousv of one of their associates, frivolous girl
Tho when she found that neither Agnes nor Kate
would be guided by her, set about watching for an
opportunity to be revenged.
A great wedding was to take place in a family
Cor whom Madam B. worked, and the finishing of
+ba trousseau demanded extra hours on Satur-
dev night That neither of the Catholic girls in
her employ would sit up all night to work on the
veddng garments greatly enraged the dressmaker,
md provoked many taunts from their jealous COM
nanions but at midnight the sisters quietly folded
their work and with polite good-evenings, left the
establishment. They hurried through the nearly de-
serted streets, and they were crossing towards
Seventh Avenue were Mortified to find themselves
followed by an evil-looking man. Kate, the young
or of the two whispered that she dared go no far
Their They were in respectable street, and she
begged her sisted to ask for shelter in house where
g light was burning in a second-story window.
The girls were inexperienced but their fright
o7ercame all else and they ran up the steps of the
house and rang the bell The door was opened by
young lady, who listened very coldly to their re-
quest to be permitted even to remain in the hall
till daybreak.
q am sitting up with my little sister, who is ILL.,"
she explained. of you Will come upstairs to the
room, | Will ask my mother what can be done"
The girls gratefully accompanied her to the
room above where the little invalid lay sleeping.
The gas was carefully shaded and the objects in
the room dimly to be seen. The young lady depart
ed and in a few moments returned. saying that her
mother could not possibly shelter strangers. They
had explained that they worked in Madam BIS es-
tablshment, But this made no difference; and they
were compelled to go out and hurry home
On the following Monday morning they were
preparing to leave the room where the girls hung
up their wraps when Edna, the girl whose jealousy
they had provoked, met them with words of deri-
sion; and while they were still bewildered, not
knowing what to make of her conduct, Madam B.
sent for them. Judge of their horror when they
found themselves in the presence of an officer who
held warrant for their arresti The crime with
which they were charged the stealing of
bracelet from the room in which they had spent ten
minutes on Saturday night. Useless were their
protesations; they were hurried off to jail to await
trial; and it may easily be imagined that Madam
B and Edna added weight to the charge by refus-
character.
l must pass over in silence the many painful
details of the fortnight which followed, during
which the unfortunate girls were tried for crime
Of which God knew them to be wholly innocent, but
OF which circumstantial evidence made them ap-
pear guilty The young lady testified that the
bracelet, of thin flexible gold, was on the table
when she left the room, and gone on her return;
while maid-servant in her mothers employ de-
clared that she had passed the door of the
while the girls were sitting there, and had
them slip something glittering like gold into the
small handbag which one of them carried.
They friendless their employer declared
them to be 'untrustworthy," and the final result
was their sentence to two years Imprisonment The
greet of the younger sister was so wild and pas
sonate as they were conveyed to their prison home
that the elder determined to herself to every
effort for the sake of her companion She re-
solved to face the next two years, awful the pros
pect was, with faith in Divine Lord and daily
prayer for courage and patience. l have it the
testimony of the prison matron, and others who
watched the sisters, that their conduct became
shining example to all within the dreadful enclos-
gre where they were doomed to live like criminals
Inc health of the younger sister failed rapidly
something like content in working out their saliva
non through these agonizing means might have
been theirs.
year had passed away, when one day the
IN house. Entering the parlor, she saw lady
richly dressed but bearing in her countenance evil
uences Of great agitation. Her eyes were red and
swollen from weeping; and, the matrons en-
trance she sprang forward exclaiming:
>, " Madam, take me at once to see Agnes and
Nate NJ, the innocent girls whom L have so deeply
WrOnged!"
She then went on to explain that few days
before, the bookshelves in a certain room in her
mothers house were removed during some altera-
uons Far down behind a pile of pamphlets
~eaged between two shelves, they a glittering
OBJECT, which investigation proved to be the
very bracelet which the girls had been accused of
sOeallng The book near it was one the young lady
remember to have been looking at that Saturday
nIlght, and she could only conclude that she had
Alpped the soft gold bracelet between its pages and
replaced the book upon the SHELF unconscious of
Hef own action, when she went to answer the bell
perhaps expecting a call from the doctor. The
nousemad's testimony, of course, was only idle ex-
Sggeratlon, concocted doubtless to shield herself
from suspicion. The family having gone to Eu-
rope soon after the trial. investigation had been
made OF the bookshelves until the week previous
The sensation which followed NAV eesilv he inn