'I come to prevent murder! Father, think what you are about to do?
Here are fifty fellow-creatures coming in search of life and shelter,
and you will give them death!'
'This is no place for you, Madeleine!' cried the other in a husky
voice. 'Go home, girl, and let me never see you out again at night!'
'Away, Madeleine!--away!' said the crowd angrily.
'I will not away!--I will stay here to see you do your foul deed--to
fix it on my mind, that day and night I may shout in your ears that ye
are murderers! Father,' added she solemnly, 'imbrue your hands in the
blood of one man to-night, and I am no child of yours. I will beg, I
will crawl through the world on my hands, but never more will I eat
the bread of crime!'
'Take her away, Pierre,' said one more ruffianly than the rest, 'or
you may repent it.'
'Go, girl, go,' whispered Pierre faintly, while the wreckers moved in
a body to the shore, where the boats were about to strike.
'Never!' shrieked Madeleine, clinging franticly to her father's
clothes.
'Let me go!' cried Pierre, dragging her with him.
At that moment a terrible event interrupted their struggle. A man
stood upright in the foremost boat, guiding their progress.
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