Strips of clear blue water stretched on both sides of the island, and as Marion listened to the thrilling tales and traditions which have long made Hell Gate a place of blood-curdling interest, she could hardly turn her eyes from the far-famed danger spot. It seemed to enthral her in some spell of enchantment. The great cities of Brooklyn and New York made a magnificent background to the scene. Spires towered from expensive churches, and at sunset the plate-glass windows of the many noble structures gave back a glow which was almost glorious. Thus the city’s grandeur and luxury was before her eyes, while its misery was in even closer proximity, for was she not caring for its victims, its slaves and its outcasts in the very wards of this isolated building? “Oh, to think that such wretchedness should exist!” she sighed over and over. “To think that with all the wealth and luxury of New York, these poor, poor creatures should drag out such an existence!” As Marion passed through the wards, her heart was heavy within her. It was a condition which the simple country girl had never dreamed could exist—a condition which she could by any possibility have imagined, but, nevertheless, one of the saddest, sternest, most reliable facts in the history of the city. Inside were the sick, the deformed, the crippled. Women whom shame had driven from the sight of the world, others whom care, abuse, over-work and under-pay had reduced to that condition known as invalid vagrancy. Outside, in the numerous buildings, were other classes—criminals, “crooks,” “scapegraces” and prodigals and careworn men and decrepit women—paupers, homeless and penniless at the close of life and dependent upon what some have called a city’s “charity.” It took Marion some time to grasp the full horror of the Island. The spot was so beautiful that it made the realization more difficult. True to her resolve, she had written at once to Silas, and as the hours went by, she consoled herself by thinking that Sallie must be safely at home, unless—and here a thrill of horror would cross her—unless she had died in the hospital before Silas could get the letter. The thought of poor Sallie made her keenly alive to the sufferings of the unfortunates around her. That one glimpse of Sallie’s white face seemed to haunt her continually. Over and over she marveled at the apparent indifference of the other nurses, and wondered if it were possible that she, too, would become hardened to her surroundings. “I am afraid I shall become morbid,” she said to the head nurse in her ward one day. “I cannot drive the horrors of this Island out of my mind for a minute. It is fortunate for me that you keep me so busy.” Miss Williams smiled sadly. She was a sweet-faced woman. “You will be obliged to grow indifferent. It is your only safeguard,” she said, kindly. “An over-sympathetic nurse is never very successful.”