`` The Lord save us ! '' said Janet in an awed tone . `` I knew the poor girl was simple , but I did n't know she was like THAT . And are you going , sir ? '' `` Yes , of course . I pray God I may be able to help the poor soul , '' said Mr. Leonard sincerely . He was a man who never shirked what he believed to be his duty ; but duty had sometimes presented itself to him in pleasanter guise than this summons to Naomi Clark 's death-bed . The woman had been the plague spot of Lower Carmody and Carmody Harbour for a generation . In the earlier days of his ministry to the congregation he had tried to reclaim her , and Naomi had mocked and flouted him to his face . Then , for the sake of those to whom she was a snare or a heart-break , he had endeavoured to set the law in motion against her , and Naomi had laughed the law to scorn . Finally , he had been compelled to let her alone . Yet Naomi had not always been an outcast . Her girlhood had been innocent ; but she was the possessor of a dangerous beauty , and her mother was dead . Her father was a man notorious for his harshness and violence of temper . When Naomi made the fatal mistake of trusting to a false love that betrayed and deserted , he drove her from his door with taunts and curses . Naomi took up her quarters in a little deserted house at Spruce Cove . Had her child lived it might have saved her . But it died at birth , and with its little life went her last chance of worldly redemption . From that time forth , her feet were set in the way that takes hold on hell . For the past five years , however , Naomi had lived a tolerably respectable life .
When Janet Peterson had died , her idiot daughter , Maggie , had been left with no kin XXXXX the world .
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