Taken up, then cruelly abandoned by a group of American sailors, she ends up sharing an idyll with a petty thief and kindred spirit named Orso (Mr. Malgras).

That numberless, nameless section is the key: it introduces us to Miriam, a 10-year-old girl cruelly abandoned by her deeply disturbed mother.

As the story of a cruelly abandoned wife's reascendance zigzags from soap opera to slapstick to church sermon and back, it goes from A to Z on the all-things-to-all-people meter: Cinderella meets Amos 'n' Andy in Sunday school, so to speak.

It was like an old tale, perhaps the story of a young girl cruelly abandoned by her family, who grew up able to talk with the birds and fishes, with raven and salmon and deer.

In the middle of the yellow lamplight, against which the sharp outline of his goatlike profile shone out with great distinctness, he stood showing off his figure and affecting the pose of one who has been cruelly abandoned.

We learn that justice may not always follow a just act, that justice can sleep for years and awaken when it is least expected, that a miracle is nothing more than dormant justice from another time arriving to compensate those it has cruelly abandoned.