The prostitutes also work at an unrespected trade, but, like the gambler, they possess noble qualities. The love they show for the young Piney Woods puts them morally above the people who have banished them. They are victims of a town that has temporarily decided to enforce a narrow view of virtue. Like Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), they grow in a moral sense, in contrast to their tormentors. The prostitutes have hearts of gold; the townspeople are striving to obtain pockets of gold and the respectability that goes with wealth and social position. Of the four exiles, only Uncle Billy deserved the punishment, which leads to the question of the guilt or innocence of the men hanged by the committee. The gambler and his two women compatriots seem to be superior to the vigilantes.