"
And Dale thought how the man, when he was alive, dealt with any
innocent unprotected girl who chanced to fall into his power. In
imagination he saw him taking care of Mavis, when she was young and
tender, and scarcely knew right from wrong. In imagination he saw it
all again--the pattings and pawings, the scheming and devising, the
luring and ensnaring--Barradine and Mavis--the man of many years and
the girl of few years, the serpent and the dove, the destroyer and the
destroyed. Those torturing mental pictures glowed and took form, and
were as vivid now as when, in the hour of his grief and despair, he
first made them and saw them.
This departed saint, whose memory had become as a fragrance of myrrh,
whose name sounded like the clinking of an incense-pot swung by devout
hands, whose monument stood firm as a temple built upon the rock, was
simply a dirty old beast for whom no excuse could be possible. What
worse crime can there be than that of befouling youth? Who is a worse
enemy to the commonweal than he who snatches and steals for his
transient gratification treasures that are accumulating to make some
honest man's life-long joy? Such wanton abuse of society's law and
nature's plan is the unpardonable sin; it is sin as monstrous as the
enormities that brought down fire upon the dwellers in the cities of
the plain.
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