CHAPTER XXVII

YOU'LL COME BACK A MAN

It was after dark when the old man, pale, and his knees still shaking

with the terrible strain and excitement of it all, reached his cabin

on the mountain. The cheers of the grand-stand still echoed in his

ears, and, shut his eyes as he would, he still saw Ben Butler,

stretched out on the track struggling for the little breath that was

in him.

Jack Bracken walked in behind the old man carrying a silken sack

which sagged and looked heavy.

The grandfather caught up Shiloh first and kissed her. Then he sat

down with the frail form in his arms and looked earnestly at her with

his deep piercing eyes.

"Where's the ole hoss," began his wife, her eyes beginning to snap.

"You've traded him off an' I'll bet you got soaked, Hillard Watts--I

can tell it by that pesky, sheepish look in yo' eyes. You never cu'd

trade horses an' I've allers warned you not to trade the ole roan."

"Wal, yes," said the Bishop. "I've traded him for this--" and his

voice grew husky with emotion--"for this, Tabitha, an', Jack, jes'

pour it out on the table there."

It came out, yellow waves of gold. The light shone on them, and as

the tired eyes of little Shiloh peeped curiously at them, each one

seemed to throw to her a kiss of hope, golden tipped and resplendent.

The old woman stood dazed, and gazing sillily. Then she took up one

of the coins and bit it gingerly.

"In God's name, Hillard Watts, what does all this mean? Why, it's

genuwine gold."

"It means," said the old man cheerily, "that Shiloh an' the chillun

will never go into that mill ag'in--that old Ben Butler has give 'em

back their childhood an' a chance to live. It means," he said

triumphantly, "that Cap'n Tom's gwinter have the chance he's been

entitled to all these years--an' that means that God'll begin to

unravel the tangle that man in his meanness has wound up. It means,

Tabitha, that you'll not have to wuck anymo' yo'self--no mo', as long

as you live--"

The old woman clutched at the bed-post: "Me?--not wuck anymo'? Not

hunt 'sang an' spatterdock an' clean up an' wash an' scour an' cook

an'--"

"No, why not, Tabitha? We've got a plenty to--"

He saw her clutch again at the bed-post and go down in a heap,

saying:--

"Lemme die--now, if I can't wuck no mo'."

They lifted her on the bed and bathed her face. It was ten minutes

before she came around and said feebly:

"I'm dyin', Hillard, it's kilt me to think I'll not have to wuck any

mo'."

"Oh, no, Tabitha, I wouldn't die fur that," he said soothingly. "It's

terrible suddent like, I kno', an' hard fur you to stan', but try to

bear it, honey, fur our sakes. It's hard to be stricken suddent like

with riches, an' I've never seed a patient get over it, it is true.

You'll be wantin' to change our cabin into an ole Colonial home,

honey, an' have a carriage an' a pair of roached mules, an' a wantin'

me to start a cotton factory an' jine a whis'-club, whilst you

entertain the Cottontown Pettico't Club with high-noon teas, an' cut

up a lot o' didoes that'll make the res' of the town laugh. But you

mus' fight ag'in it, Tabitha, honey. We'll jes' try to live as we've

allers lived an' not spend our money so as to have people talk about

how we're throwin' it at the ducks. You can get up befo' day as usual

an' hunt 'sang on the mountain side, and do all the other things

you've l'arnt to do befo' breakfast."

This was most reassuring, and the old woman felt much better. But the

next morning she complained bitterly:

"I tested ever' one o' them yaller coins las' night, they mout a put

a counterfeit in the lot, an' see heah, Hillard--" she grinned

showing her teeth--"I wore my teeth to the quick a testin' 'em!"

The next week, as the train took the Bishop away, he stood on the

rear platform to cry good-bye to Shiloh and Jack Bracken who were

down to see him off. By his side was a stooped figure and as the old

man jingled some gold in his pocket he said, patting the figure on

the back:

"You'll come back a man, Cap'n Tom--thank God! a man ag'in!"

PART FIFTH.--THE LOOM

CHAPTER I

A NEW MILL GIRL

The autumn had deepened--the cotton had been picked. The dry stalks,

sentinelling the seared ground, waved their tattered remnants of

unpicked bolls to and fro--summer's battle flags which had not yet

fallen.

Millwood was astir early that morning--what there was of it. One by

one the lean hounds had arisen from their beds of dry leaves under

the beeches, and, shaking themselves with that hound-shake which

began at their noses and ended in a circular twist of their skeleton

tails, had begun to hunt for stray eggs and garbage. Yet their master

was already up and astir.

He came out and took a long drink from the jug behind the door. He

drank from the jug's mouth, and the gurgling echo sounded down the

empty hall: _Guggle--guggle--gone! Guggle--guggle--gone!_ It said to

Edward Conway as plainly as if it had a voice.

"Yes, you've gone--that's the last of you. Everything is gone," he

said.

He sat down on his favorite chair, propped his feet upon the rotten

balcony's rim and began to smoke.

Within, he heard Lily sobbing. Helen was trying to comfort her.

Conway glanced into the room. The oldest sister was dressed in a

plain blue cotton gown--for to-day she would begin work at the mill.

Conway remembered it. He winced, but smoked on and said nothing.

"'Tain't no use--'tain't no use," sobbed the little one--"My mammy's

gone--gone!"

Such indeed was the fact. Mammy Maria had gone. All that any of them

knew was that only an hour before another black mammy had come to

serve them, and all she would say was that she had come to take Mammy

Maria's place--gone, and she knew not where.

Conway winced again and then swore under his breath. At first he had

not believed it, none of them had. But as the morning went on and

Mammy Maria failed to appear, he accepted it, saying: "Jus' like a

niggah--who ever heard of any of them havin' any gratitude!"

Helen was too deeply numbed by the thought of the mill to appreciate

fully her new sorrow. All she knew--all she seemed to feel--was, that

go to the mill she must--go--go--and Lily might cry and the world

might go utterly to ruin--as her own life was going:

"I want my mammy--I want my mammy," sobbed the little one.

Then the mother instinct of Helen--that latent motherhood which is in

every one of her sex, however young--however old--asserted itself for

the first time.

She soothed the younger child: "Never mind, Lily, I am going to the

mill only to learn my lesson this week--next week you shall go with

me. We will not be separated after that."

"I want my mammy--oh, I want my mammy," was all Lily could say.

Breakfast was soon over and then the hour came--the hour when Helen

Conway would begin her new life. This thought--and this only--burned

into her soul: To-day her disgrace began. She was no longer a Conway.

The very barriers of her birth, that which had been thrown around her

to distinguish her from the common people, had been broken down. The

foundation of her faith was shattered with it.

For the last time, as a Conway, she looked at the fields of

Millwood--at the grim peak of Sunset Rock above--the shadowed wood

below. Until then she did not know it made such a difference in the

way she looked at things. But now she saw it and with it the ruin,

the abandonment of every hope, every ambition of her life. As she

stood upon the old porch before starting for the mill, she felt that

she was without a creed and without a principle.

"I would do anything," she cried bitterly--"I care for nothing. If I

am tempted I shall steal, I know I shall--I know I shall"--she

repeated.

It is a dangerous thing to change environments for the worse. It is

more dangerous still to break down the moral barrier, however frail

it may be, which our conscience has built between the good and the

evil in us. Some, reared under laws that are loose, may withstand

this barrier breaking and be no worse for the change; but in the case

of those with whom this barrier of their moral belief stands securely

between conscience and forbidden paths, let it fall, and all the best

of them will fall with it.

For with them there are no degrees in degradation--no caste in the

world of sin. Headlong they rush to moral ruin. And there are those

like Helen Conway, too blinded by the environment of birth to know

that work is not degradation. To them it is the lowering of every

standard of their lives, standards which idleness has erected. And

idleness builds strange standards.

If it had occurred to Helen Conway--if she had been reared to know

that to work honestly for an honest living was the noblest thing in

life, how different would it all have been!

And so at last what is right and what is wrong depend more upon what

has gone before than what follows after. It is more a question of

pedigree and environment than of trials and temptations.

"I shall steal," she repeated--"oh, I know I shall."

And yet, as her father drove her in the old shambling buggy across

the hill road to the town, there stood out in her mind one other

picture which lingered there all day and for many days. She could not

forget it nor cast it from her, and in spite of all her sorrow it

uplifted her as she had been uplifted at times before when, reading

the country newspaper, there had blossomed among its dry pages the

perfume of a stray poem, whose incense entered into her soul of

souls.

It was a young man in his shirt sleeves, his face flushed with work,

his throat bare, plowing on the slope of the hillside for the fall

sowing of wheat.

What a splendid picture he was, silhouetted in the rising sun against

the pink and purple background of sunbeams!

It was Clay Westmore, and he waved his hand in his slow, calm

forceful way as he saw her go by.

It was a little thing, but it comforted her. She remembered it long.

The mill had been running several hours when Kingsley looked up, and

saw standing before him at his office window a girl of such stately

beauty that he stood looking sillily at her, and wondering.

He did not remember very clearly afterwards anything except this

first impression; that her hair was plaited in two rich coils upon

her head, and that never before had he seen so much beauty in a

gingham dress.

He remembered, too, that her eyes, which held him spellbound, wore

more an expression of despair and even desperation than of youthful

hope. He could not understand why they looked that way, forerunners

as they were of such a face and hair.

And so he stood, sillily smiling, until Richard Travis arose from his

desk and came forward to meet her.

She nodded at him and tried to smile, but Kingsley noticed that it

died away into drawn, hard lines around her pretty mouth.

"It is Miss Conway," he said to Kingsley, taking her hand familiarly

and holding it until she withdrew it with a conscious touch of

embarrassment.

"She is one of my neighbors, and, by the way, Kingsley, she must have

the best place in the mill."

Kingsley continued to look sillily at her. He had not heard of

Helen--he did not understand.

"A place in the mill--ah, let me see," he said thoughtfully.

"I've been thinking it out," went on Travis, "and there is a

drawing-in machine ready for her. I understand Maggie is going to

quit on account of her health."

"I, ah--" began Kingsley--"Er--well, I never heard of a beginner

starting on a drawing-in machine."

"I have instructed Maggie to teach her," said Travis shortly. Then he

beckoned to Helen: "Come."

She followed Richard Travis through the mill. He watched her as she

stepped in among the common herd of people--the way at first in which

she threw up her head in splendid scorn. Never had he seen her so

beautiful. Never had he desired to own her so much as then.

"The exquisite, grand thing," he muttered. "And I shall--she shall be

mine."

Then her head sank again with a little crushed smile of helpless pity

and resignation. It touched even Travis, and he said, consolingly, to

her:

"You are too beautiful to have to do this and you shall not--for

long. You were born to be queen of--well, The Gaffs, eh?"

He laughed and then he touched boldly her hair which lay splendidly

around her temples.

She looked at him resignedly, then she flushed to her eyes and

followed him.

The drawer-in is to the loom what the architect is to the building.

And more--it is both architect and foundation, for as the threads are

drawn in so must the cloth be.

The work is tedious and requires skill, patience, quickness, and that

nicety of judgment which comes with intellect of a higher order than

is commonly found in the mill. For that reason the drawer-in is

removed from the noise of the main room--she sits with another

drawer-in in a quiet, little room nearby, and, with her trained

fingers, she draws in through the eyelets the threads, which set the

warp.

Maggie was busy, but she greeted him with a quaint, friendly little

smile. Helen noticed two things about her at once: that there was a

queer bright light in her eyes, and that beneath them glowed two

bright red spots, which, when Travis approached, deepened quickly.

"Yes, I am going to leave the mill," she said, after Travis had left

them together. "I jus' can't stan' it any longer. Mother is dead, you

know, an' father is an invalid. I've five little brothers and sisters

at home. I couldn't bear to see them die in here. It's awful on

children, you know. So I've managed to keep 'em a-goin'

until--well--I've saved enough an' with the help

of--a--a--friend--you see--a very near friend--I've managed to get us

a little farm. We're all goin' to it next week. Oh, yes, of course,

I'll be glad to teach you."

She glanced at Helen's hands and smiled: "Yo' hands don't look like

they're used to work. They're so white and beautiful."

Helen was pleased. Her fingers were tapering and beautiful, and she

knew her hands were the hands of many generations of ladies.

"I have to make a living for myself now," she said with a dash of

bitterness.

"If I looked like you," said Maggie, slyly and yet frankly, "I'd do

something in keeping with my place. I can't bear to think of anybody

like you bein' here."

Helen was silent and Maggie saw that the tears were ready to start.

She saw her half sob and she patted her cheek in a motherly way as

she said:

"Oh, but I didn't mean to hurt you so. Only I do hate so to see--oh,

I am silly, I suppose, because I am going to get out of this

terrible, terrible grind."

Her pale face flushed and she coughed, as she bent over her work to

show Helen how to draw in the threads.

"Now, I'm a good drawer-in, an' he said onct"--she nodded at the door

from which Travis had gone out--"that I was the best in the worl';

the whole worl'." She blushed slightly. "But, well--I've made no

fortune yet--an' somehow, in yo' case now--you see--somehow I feel

sorter 'fraid--about you--like somethin' awful was goin' to happen to

you."

"Why--what--" began Helen, surprised.

"Oh, it ain't nothin'," she said trying to be cheerful--"I'll soon

get over this ... out in the air. I'm weak now and I think it makes

me nervous an' skeery.... I'll throw it off that quick," she snapped

her fingers--"out in the open air again--out on the little farm." She

was silent, as if trying to turn the subject, but she went back to it

again. "You don't know how I've longed for this--to get away from the

mill. It's day in an' day out here an' shut up like a convict. It

ain't natural--it can't be--it ain't nature. If anybody thinks it is,

let 'em look at them little things over on the other side," and she

nodded toward the main room. "Why, them little tots work twelve hours

a day an' sometimes mo'. Who ever heard of children workin' at all

befo' these things come into the country? Now, I've no objection to

'em, only that they ought to work grown folks an' not children. They

may kill me if they can," she laughed,--"I am grown, an' can stan'

it, but I can't bear to think of 'em killin' my little brothers an'

sisters--they're entitled to live until they get grown anyway."

She stopped to cough and to show Helen how to untangle some threads.

"Oh, but they can't hurt me," she laughed, as if ashamed of her

cough; "this is bothersome, but it won't last long after I get out on

the little farm."

She stopped talking and fell to her work, and for two hours she

showed Helen just how to draw the threads through, to shift the

machine, to untangle the tangled threads.

It was nearly time to go home when Travis came to see how Helen was

progressing. He came up behind the two girls and stood looking at

them work. When they looked up Maggie started and reddened and Helen

saw her tighten her thin lips in a peculiar way while the blood flew

from them, leaving a thin white oval ring in the red that flushed her

face.

"You are doing finely," he said to Helen--"you will make a swift

drawer-in." He stooped over and whispered: "Such fingers and hands

would draw in anything--even hearts."

Helen blushed and looked quickly at Maggie, over whose face the

pinched look had come again, but Maggie was busy at her machine.

"I remember when I came here five years ago," went on Maggie after

Travis had left, "I was so proud an' happy. I was healthy an' well

an' so happy to think I cu'd make a livin' for the home-folks--for

daddy an' the little ones. Oh, they would put them in the mill, but I

said no, I'll work my fingers off first. Let 'em play an' grow. Yes,

they've lived on what I have made for five years--daddy down on his

back, too, an' the children jus' growin', an' now they are big enough

and strong enough to he'p me run the little farm--instead"--she said

after a pause--"instead of bein' dead an' buried, killed in the mill.

That was five years ago--five years"--she coughed and looked out of

the window reflectively.

"Daddy--poor daddy--he couldn't help the tree fallin' on his back an'

cripplin' him; an' little Buddy, well, he was born weakly, so I done

it all. Oh, I am not braggin' an' I ain't complainin', I'm so proud

to do it."

Helen was silent, her own bitterness softened by the story Maggie was

telling, and for a while she forgot herself and her sorrow.

It is so always. When we would weep we have only to look around and

see others who would wail.

"When I come I was as rosy as you," Maggie went on; "not so pretty

now, mind you--nobody could be as pretty as you."

She said it simply, but it touched Helen.

"But I'll get my color back on the little farm--I'll be well again."

She was silent a while. "I kno' you are wonderin' how I saved and got

it." Helen saw her face sparkle and the spots deepen. "Mr. Travis

has been so kind to me in--in other ways--but that's a big secret,"

she laughed, "I'm to tell you some day, or rather you'll see yo'self,

an' then, oh--every thing will be all right an' I'll be ever so much

happier than I am now."

She jumped up impulsively and stood before Helen.

"Mightn't I kiss you once,--you're so pretty an' fresh?" And she

kissed the pretty girl half timidly on the cheek.

"It makes me so happy to think of it," she went on excitedly, "to

think of owning a little farm all by ourselves, to go out into the

air every day whenever you feel like it and not have to work in the

mill, nor ask anybody if you may, but jus' go out an' see things

grow--an' hear the birds sing and set under the pretty green trees

an' gather wild flowers if you want to. To keep house an' to clean up

an' cook instead of forever drawin'-in, an' to have a real flower

garden of yo' own--yo' very own."

They worked for hours, Maggie talking as a child who had found at

last a sympathetic listener. Twilight came and then a clang of bells

and the shaft above them began to turn slower and slower. Helen

looked up wondering why it had all stopped so suddenly. She met the

eyes of Travis looking at her.

"I am to take you home," he said to her, "the trotters are at the

door. Oh," as he looked at her work--"why, you have done first rate

for the day."

"It's Maggie's," she whispered.

He had not seen Maggie and he stood looking at Helen with such

passionate, patronizing, commanding, masterful eyes, that she shrank

for a moment, sideways.

Then he laughed: "How beautiful you are! There are queens born and

queens made--I shall call you the queen of the mill, eh?"

He reached out and tried to take her hand, but she shrank behind the

machine and then--

"Oh, Maggie!" she exclaimed--for the girl's face was now white and

she stood with a strained mouth as if ready to sob.

"Oh, Maggie's a good little girl," said Travis, catching her hand.

"Oh, please don't--please"--said Maggie.

Then she walked out, drawing her thin shawl around her.

CHAPTER II

IN THE DEPTHS

All the week the two girls worked together at the mill; a week which

was to Helen one long nightmare, filled, as it was, with the hum and

roar of machinery, the hot breath of the mill, and worst of all, the

seared and deadening thought that she was disgraced.

In the morning she entered the mill hoping it might fall on and

destroy her. At night she went home to a drunken father and a little

sister who needed, in her childish sorrow, all the pity and care of

the elder one.

And one night her father, being more brutal than ever, had called out

as Helen came in: "Come in, my mill-girl!"

Richard Travis always drove her home, and each night he became more

familiar and more masterful. She felt,--she knew--that she was

falling under his fascinating influence.

And worse than all, she knew she did not care.

There is a depth deeper even than the sin--the depth where the doer

ceases to care.

Indeed, she was beginning to make herself believe that she loved

him--as he said he wished her to do--and as he loved her, he said;

and with what he said and what he hinted she dreamed beautiful,

desperate dreams of the future.

She did not wonder, then, that on one drive she had permitted him to

hold her hand in his. What a strong hand it was, and how could so

weak a hand as her's resist it? And all the time he had talked so

beautifully and had quoted Browning and Keats. And finally he had

told her that she had only to say the word, and leave the mill with

him forever.

But where, she did not even care--only to get away from the mill,

from her disgrace, from her drunken father, from her wretched life.

And another night, when he had helped her out of the buggy, and while

she was close to him and looking downward, he had bent over her and

kissed her on the neck, where her hair had been gathered up and had

left it white and fair and unprotected. And it sent a hot flame of

shame to the depths of her brain, but she could only look up and

say--"Oh, please don't--please don't, Mr. Travis," and then dart

quickly into the old gate and run to her home.

But within it was only to meet the taunts and sneers of her father

that brought again the hot Conway blood in defying anger to her face,

and then she had turned and rushed back to the gate which Travis had

just left, crying:

"Take me now--anywhere--anywhere. Carry me away from here."

But she heard only the sound of his trotters' feet up the road, and

overcome with the reflective anguish of it all, she had tottered and

dropped beneath the tree upon the grass--dropped to weep.

After a while she sat up, and going down the long path to the old

spring, she bathed her face and hands in its cool depths. Then she

sat upon a rock which jutted out into the water. It calmed her to sit

there and feel the rush of the air from below, upon her hot cheeks

and her swollen eyes.

The moon shone brightly, lighting up the water, the rocks which held

the spring pool within their fortress of gray, and the long green

path of water-cresses, stretching away and showing where the spring

branch ran to the pasture.

Glancing down, she saw her own image in the water, and she smiled to

see how beautiful it was. There was her hair hanging splendidly down

her back, and in the mirror of water beneath she saw it was tinged

with that divine color which had set the Roman world afire in

Cleopatra's days. But then, there was her dress--her mill dress.

She sighed--she looked up at the stars. They always filled her with

great waves of wonder and reverence.

"Is mother in one of you?" she asked. "Oh, mother, why were you taken

from your two little girls? and if the dead are immortal, can they

forget us of earth? Can they be indifferent to our fate? How could

they be happy if they knew--" She stopped and looking up, picked out

a single star that shone brighter than the others, clinging so close

to the top of Sunset Rock as to appear a setting to his crown.

"I will imagine she is there"--she whispered--"in that world--O

mother--mother--will you--cannot you help me?"

She was weeping and had to bathe her face again. Then another impulse

seized her--an impulse of childhood. Pulling off her stockings, she

dipped her feet in the cool water and splashed them around in sheer

delight.

The moonbeams falling on them under the water turned the pink into

white, and she smiled to see how like the pictures of Diana her

ankles looked.

She had forgotten that the old spring was near the public road and

that the rail fence was old and fallen. Her revery was interrupted by

a bantering, half drunken, jolly laugh:

"Well, I must say I never saw anything quite so pretty!"

She sprang up in shame. Leaning on the old fence, she saw Harry

Travis, a roguish smile on his face. She thought she would run, then

she remembered her bare feet and she sat down on the grass, covering

her ankles with her skirt. At first she wanted to cry, then she grew

indignant as he came tipsily toward her and sat down by her side.

She was used to the smell of whiskey on the breath. Its slightest

odor she knew instantly. To her it was the smell of death.

"Got to the Gov'nor's private bottle to-night," he said familiarly,

"and took a couple of cocktails. Going over to see Nellie, but

couldn't resist such beauties as"--he pointed to her feet.

"It was mean of you to slip upon me as you did," she said. Then she

turned the scorn of her eyes on him and coolly looked him over, the

weak face, the boyish, half funny smile, the cynical eyes,--trying to

be a man of the world and too weak to know what it all meant.

The Conway spirit had come to her--it always did in a critical

moment. She no longer blushed or even feared him.

"How, how," she said slowly and looking him steadily over, "did I

ever love such a thing as you?"

He moved up closer. "You will have to kiss me for that," he said

angrily. "I've kissed you so often I know just how to do it," and he

made an attempt to throw his arms around her.

She sprang away from him into the spring branch, standing knee deep

in the water and among the water-cresses.

He arose hot with insolence: "Oh, you think you are too good for me

now--now that the Gov'nor has set his heart on you. Damn him--you

were mine before you were his. He may have you, but he will take you

with Cassius' kisses on your lips."

He sprang forward, reached over the rock and seized her by the arm.

But she jerked away from him and sprang back into the deeper water of

the spring. She did not scream, but it seemed that her heart would

burst with shame and anger. She thought of Ophelia, and as she looked

down into the water she wiped away indifferently and silently the

cool drops which had splashed up into her face, and she wondered if

she might not be able to drop down flat and drown herself there, and

thus end it all.

He had come to the edge of the rock and stood leering drunkenly down

on her.

"I love you," he laughed ironically.

"I hate you," she said, looking up steadily into his eyes and moving

back out of his reach.

The water had wet her dress, and she stooped and dipped some of it up

and bathed her hot cheeks.

"I'll kiss you if I have to wade into that spring."

"If I had a brother,--oh, if I even had a father," she said, looking

at him with a flash of Conway fire in her eyes--"and you did--you

would not live till morning--you know you wouldn't."

She stood now knee-deep in water. Above her the half-drunken boy,

standing on the rock which projected into the spring, emboldened with

drink and maddened by the thought that she had so easily given him

up, had reached out and seized her around the neck. He was rough, and

it choked her as he drew her to him.

She screamed for the first time--for she thought she heard hoof beats

coming down the road; then she heard a horseman clear the low fence

and spur into the spring branch. The water from the horse's feet

splashed over her. She remembered it only faintly--the big

glasses--the old straw hat,--the leathern bag of samples around his

shoulders.

"Most unusual," she heard him say, with more calmness it seemed to

Helen than ever: "Quite unusual--insultingly so!"

Instinctively she held up her arms and he stooped in the saddle and

lifted her up and set her on the stone curbing on the side farthest

from Harry Travis.

Then he turned and very deliberately reached over and seized Harry

Travis, who stood on the rock, nearly on a line with the pommel of

the saddle. But the hand that gripped the back of Harry's neck was

anything but gentle. It closed around the neck at the base of the

brain, burying its fingers in the back muscles with paralyzing pain

and jerked him face downward across the saddle with a motion so swift

that he was there before he knew it. Then another hand seized him and

rammed his mouth, as he lay across the pommel of the saddle, into the

sweaty shoulders below the horse's withers, and he felt the horse

move out and into the road and up to the crossing of the ways just as

a buggy and two fast bay mares came around the corner.

The driver of the bays stopped as he saw his cousin thrown like a pig

over the pommel and held there kicking and cursing.

"I was looking for him," said Richard Travis quietly, "but I would

like to know what it all means."

The big glasses shone in kindly humor. They did not reflect any

excitement in the eyes behind them.

"I am afraid it means that he is drunk. Perhaps he will tell you

about it. Quite unusual, I must say--he seemed to be trying to drown

a young lady in a spring."

He eased his burden over the saddle and dropped him into the road.

Richard Travis took it in instantly, and as Clay rode away he heard

the cousin say: "You damned yellow cur--to bear the name of Travis."

CHAPTER III

WORK IN A NEW LIGHT

It was an hour before Clay Westmore rode back to Millwood. He had

been too busy plowing that day to get, sooner, a specimen of the rock

he had seen out-cropping on Sand Mountain. At night, after supper, he

had ridden over for it.

And now by moonlight he had found it!

He flushed with the strength of it all as he put it in his

satchel--the strength of knowing that not even poverty, nor work, nor

night could keep him from accomplishing his purpose.

Then he rode back, stopping at Millwood. For he thought, too, that he

might see Helen, and while he had resolved not to force himself on

her after what she had said when he last saw her, still he wished

very much to see her now and then.

For somehow, it never got out of his deductive head that some day she

would learn to love him. Had he known the temptation, the despair

that was hers, he would not have been so quietly deliberate. But she

had never told him. In fact, he had loved her from a distance all his

life in his quiet way, though now, by her decree, they were scarcely

more than the best of friends. Some day, after he had earned enough,

he would tell her just how much he loved her. At present he could

not, for was he not too poor, and were not his mother and sister

dependent upon him?

He knew that Harry Travis loved her in a way--a love he was certain

would not last, and in the fullness and depths of his sincere nature,

he felt as sure of ultimately winning her, by sheer force of

strength, of consistency and devotion, as he was that every great

thing in life had been done by the same force and would be to the end

of time.

As sure as that, by this same force, he, himself, would one day

discover the vein of coal which lay somewhere in the beautiful valley

of the Tennessee.

And so he waited his time with the easy assurance of the philosopher

which he was, and with that firm faith which minds of his strength

always have in themselves and their ultimate success.

It surprised him, it is true--hurt him--when he found to what extent

Harry Travis had succeeded in winning the love of Helen. He was hurt

because he expected--hoped--she would see further into things than

she had. And counting all the poverty and hardships of his life, the

Sunday afternoon when he had left her in the arbor, after she had

told him she was engaged to Harry Travis, he could not remember when

anything had been so hard for him to bear. Later he had heard how she

had gone to work in the mill, and he knew that it meant an end of her

love affair with Harry.

To-night something told him it was time to see her again, not to tell

her of his own love, and how it would never change, whether she was

mill girl or the mistress of Millwood, but to encourage her in the

misery of it all.

Work--and did not he himself love to work? Was it not the noblest

thing of life?

He would tell her it was.

He was surprised when he saw what had just happened; but all his life

he had controlled himself to such a degree that in critical moments

he was coolest; and so what with another might have been a serious

affair, he had turned into half retributive fun, but the deadliest

punishment, as it afterwards turned out, that he could have inflicted

on a temperament and nature such as Harry Travis'. For that young

man, unable to stand the gibes of the neighborhood and the sarcasm of

his uncle when it all became known, accepted a position in another

town and never came back again.

To have been shot or floored in true melodramatic style by his rival,

as he stood on a rock with a helpless girl in his clutch, would have

been more to his liking than to be picked up bodily, by the nape of

his neck, and taken from the scene of his exploits like a pig across

a saddle.

That kind of a combat did not meet his ideas of chivalry.

Helen was dressed in her prettiest gown when Clay rode back to

Millwood, after securing the samples he had started for. She knew he

was coming and so she tied a white scarf over her head and went again

to her favorite seat beneath the trees.

"I don't know how to thank you, Clay," she said, as he swung down

from his saddle and threw his leathern bag on the grass.

"Now, you look more like yourself," he smiled admiringly, as he

looked down on her white dress and auburn hair, drooping low over her

neck and shoulders.

"Tell me about yourself and how you like it at the mill," he went on

as he sat down.

"Oh, you will not be willing to speak to me now--now that I am a

mill-girl," she added. "Do you know? Clay--"

"I know that, aside from being beautiful, you have just begun to be

truly womanly in my sight."

"Oh, Clay, do you really think that? It is the first good word that

has been spoken to me since--since my--disgrace."

He turned quickly: "Your disgrace! Do you call it disgrace to

work--to make an honest living--to be independent and self-reliant?"

He picked up his bag of samples and she saw that his hands had become

hard and sunburnt from the plow handles.

"Helen," he went on earnestly, "that is one of the hide-bound

tyrannies that must be banished from our Southland--banished as that

other tyranny, slavery, has been banished--a sin, which, with no

fault of our own, we inherited from the centuries. We shall never be

truly great--as God intended we should be great--until we learn to

work. We have the noblest and sunniest of lands, with more resources

than man now dreams of, a greater future than we know of if we will

only work--work and develop them. You have set an example for every

girl in the South who has been thrown upon her own resources. Never

before in my life have I cared--so--much--for you."

And he blushed as he said it, and fumbled his samples.

"Then you do care some for me?" she asked pleadingly. She was

heart-sick for sympathy and did not know just what she said.

He flushed and started to speak. He looked at her, and his big

glasses quivered with the suppressed emotions which lay behind them

in his eyes.

But he saw that she did not love him, that she was begging for

sympathy and not for love. Besides, what right had he to plan to

bring another to share his poverty?

He mounted his horse as one afraid to trust himself to stay longer.

But he touched her hair in his awkward, funny way, before he swung

himself into the saddle, and Helen, as she went into the desolate

home, felt uplifted as never before.

Never before had she seen work in that light--nor love.

CHAPTER IV

MAGGIE

It was Maggie's last day at the mill, and she had been unusually

thoughtful. Her face was more pinched, Helen thought, and the sadness

in her eyes had increased.

Helen had proved to be an apt pupil, and Maggie declared that

thereafter she would be able to run her machine without assistance.

It was Saturday noon and Maggie was ready to go, though the mill did

not shut down until six that day. And so she found herself standing

and looking with tearful eyes at the machine she had learned to love,

at the little room in which she had worked so long, supporting her

invalid father and her little ones--as she motherly called the

children. It had been hard--so hard, and the years had been long and

she was so weak now, compared to what she had been. How happy she had

thought the moment of her leaving would be; and yet now that it had

come--now--she was weeping.

"I didn't think," she said to Helen--"I didn't think I'd--I'd care so

to leave it--when--when--the time--came."

She turned and brushed away her tears in time to see Travis come

smiling up.

"Why, Maggie," he said playfully flipping the tip of her ear as he

passed her. "I thought you left us yesterday afternoon. You'll not be

forgetting us now that you will not see us again, will you?"

She flushed and Helen heard her say: "Forget you--ever? Oh, please,

Mr. Travis--" and her voice trembled.

"Oh, tut," he said, frowning quickly--"nothing like that here. Of

course, you will hate to leave the old mill and the old machine.

Come, Maggie, you needn't wait--you're a good girl--we all know

that."

He turned to Helen and watched her as she drew in the threads. Her

head was bent over, and her great coil of hair sat upon it like a

queen on a throne.

What a neck and throat she had--what a beautiful queenly manner!

Travis smiled an amused smile when he thought of it--an ironical

sneering smile; but he felt, as he stood there, that the girl had

fascinated him in a strange way, and now that she was in his power,

"now that Fate, or God has combined to throw her into my arms--almost

unasked for--is it possible that I am beginning to fall in love with

her?"

He had forgotten Maggie and stood looking at Helen. And in that look

Maggie saw it all. He heard her sit down suddenly.

"I would go if I were you, Maggie--you are a good girl and we shall

not forget you."

"May I stay a little while longer?" she asked. "I won't ever come

back any more, you know."

Travis turned quickly and walked off. He came back and spoke to

Helen.

"Remember, I am to take you home to-night. But it will be later than

usual, on account of the pay-roll."

As he shut the door Maggie turned, and her heart being too full to

speak, she came forward and dropped on her knees, burying her face in

Helen's lap. "You must not notice me," she said--"don't--don't--oh,

don't look at me."

Helen stroked her cheek and finally she was quiet.

Then she looked into Helen's face. "Do you know--oh, will you mind if

I speak to you--or perhaps I shouldn't--but--but--don't you see that

he loves you?"

Helen reddened to her ears.

"I am foolish--sick--nervous--I know I am silly an' yet I don't see

how he could help it--you are so queenly--beautiful--so different

from any that are here. He--he--has forgotten me--"

Helen looked at her quickly.

"Why, I don't understand," she said.

"I mean," she stammered, "he used to notice us common girls--me and

the others--"

"I don't understand you," said Helen, half indignantly.

"Oh, don't pay no 'tention to me," she said. "I, I fear I am sick,

you know--sicker than I thought," and she coughed violently.

She lay with her head in Helen's lap. "Please," she said timidly,

looking up into Helen's face at last--"please let me stay this way a

while. I never knew a mother--nobody has ever let me do this befo',

an' I am so happy for it."

Helen stroked her face and hair anew, and Maggie kneeled looking up

at her eagerly, earnestly, hungrily, scanning every feature of the

prettier girl with worshipping eyes.

"How could he he'p it--how could he he'p it," she said

softly--"yes--yes--you are his equal and so beautiful."

"I don't understand you, Maggie--indeed I do not."

Maggie arose quickly: "Good-bye--let me kiss you once mo'--I feel

like I'll never see you again--an'--an'--I've learned to love you

so!"

Helen raised her head and kissed her.

Then Maggie passed quickly out, and with her eyes only did she look

back and utter a farewell which carried with it both a kiss and a

tear. And something else which was a warning.

And Helen never forgot.

CHAPTER V

PAY-DAY

It was Saturday afternoon and pay-day, and the mill shut down at six

o'clock.

When Helen went in Kingsley sat at the Superintendent's desk, issuing

orders on the Secretary and Treasurer, Richard Travis, who sat at his

desk near by and paid the wages in silver.

Connected with the mill was a large commissary or store--a cheap

modern structure which stood in another part of the town, filled with

the necessaries of life as well as the flimsy gewgaws which delight

the heart of the average mill hand. In establishing this store, the

directors followed the usual custom of cotton-mills in smaller towns

of the South; paying their employees part in money and part in

warrants on the store. It is needless to add that the prices paid for

the goods were, in most cases, high enough to cut the wages to the

proper margin. If there was any balance at the end of the month, it

was paid in money.

Kingsley personally supervised this store, and his annual report to

the directors was one of the strong financial things of his

administration.

A crowd of factory hands stood around his desk, and the

Superintendent was busy issuing orders on the store, or striking a

balance for the Secretary and Treasurer to pay in silver.

They stood around tired, wretched, lint- and dust-covered, but

expectant. Few were there compared with the number employed; for the

wages of the minors went to their parents, and as minors included

girls under eighteen and boys under twenty-one, their parents were

there to receive their wages for them.

These children belonged to them as mercilessly as if they had been

slaves, and despite the ties of blood, no master ever more

relentlessly collected and appropriated the wages of his slaves than

did the parents the pitiful wages of their children.

There are two great whippers-in in the child slavery of the

South--the mills which employ the children and the parents who permit

it--encourage it. Of these two the parents are often the worse, for,

since the late enactment of child labor laws, they do not hesitate to

stultify themselves by false affidavits as to the child's real age.

Kingsley had often noticed how promptly and even proudly the girls,

after reaching eighteen, and the boys twenty-one, had told him

hereafter to place their wages to their own credit, and not to the

parent's. They seemed to take a new lease on life. Decrepit,

drawn-faced, hump-shouldered and dried up before their time, the few

who reached the age when the law made them their own masters, looked

not like men and women who stand on the threshold of life, but rather

like over-worked middle-aged beings of another period.

Yet that day their faces put on a brighter look.

They stood around the office desk, awaiting their turn. The big

engine had ceased to throb and the shuttles to clatter and whirl. The

mill was so quiet that those who had, year in and year out, listened

to its clatter and hum, seemed to think some overhanging calamity was

about to drop out of the sky of terrible calm.

"Janette Smith," called out Kingsley.

She came forward, a bony, stoop-shouldered woman of thirty-five years

who had been a spooler since she was fifteen.

"Seventy-seven hours for the week"--he went on mechanically, studying

the time book, "making six dollars and sixteen cents. Rent deducted

two dollars. Wood thirty-five cents. Due commissary for goods

furnished--here, Mr. Kidd," he said to the book-keeper, "let me see

Miss Smith's account." It was shoved to him across the desk. Kingsley

elevated his glasses. Then he adjusted them with a peculiar lilt--it

was his way of being ironical:

"Oh, you don't owe the store anything, Miss Smith--just eleven

dollars and eighty cents."

The woman stood stoically--not a muscle moved in her face, and not

even by the change of an eye did she indicate that such a thing as

the ordinary human emotions of disappointment and fear had a home in

the heart.

"Mother was sick all last month," she said at last in a voice that

came out in the same indifferent, unvarying tone. "I had to

overdraw."

Kingsley gave his eye-glasses another lilt. They said as plainly as

eye-glasses could: "Well, of course, I made her sick." Then he added

abruptly: "We will advance you two dollars this week--an' that will

be all."

"I hoped to get some little thing that she could eat--some relish,"

she began.

"Not our business, Miss Smith--sorry--very sorry--but try to be more

economical. Economy is the great objective haven of life. Emerson

says so. And Browning in a most beautiful line of poetry says the

same thing," he added.

"The way to begin economy is to begin it--Emerson is so helpful to

me--he always comes in at the right time."

"And it's only to be two dollars," she added.

"That's all," and he pushed her the order. She took it, cashed it and

went hurriedly out, her poke bonnet pulled over her face. But there

were hot tears and a sob under her bonnet.

And so it went on for two hours--some drawing nothing, but remaining

to beg for an order on the store to keep them running until next

week.

One man with six children in the mill next came forward and drew

eighteen dollars. He smiled complacently as he drew it and chucked

the silver into his pocket. This gave Jud Carpenter, standing near, a

chance to get in his mill talk.

"I tell you, Joe Hopper," he said, slapping the man on the back,

"that mill is a great thing for the mothers an' fathers of this

little settlement. What 'ud we do if it warn't for our chillun?"

"You're talkin now--" said Joe hopefully.

"It useter be," said Jud, looking around at his crowd, "that the

parents spoiled the kids, but now it is the kids spoilin' the

parents."

His audience met this with smiles and laughter.

"I never did know before," went on Jud, "what that old sayin' really

meant: 'A fool for luck an' a po' man for chillun.'"

Another crackling laugh.

"How much did Joe Hopper's chillun fetch 'im in this week?"

Joe jingled his silver in his pocket and spat importantly on the

floor.

"I tell you, when I married," said Jud, "I seed nothin' but poverty

an' the multiplication of my part of the earth ahead of me--poverty,

I tell you, starvation an' every new chile addin' to it. But since

you started this mill, Mister Kingsley (Kingsley smiled and bowed

across the desk at him), I've turned what everybody said 'ud starve

us into ready cash. And now I say to the young folks: 'Marry an'

multiply an' the cash will be forthcomin'.'"

This was followed by loud laughs, especially from those who were

blessed with children, and they filed up to get their wages.

Jim Stallings, who had four in the mill, was counted out eleven

dollars. As he pocketed it he looked at Jud and said:

"Oh, no, Jud; it don't pay to raise chillun. I wish I had the chance

old Sollerman had. I'd soon make old Vanderbilt look like shin

plaster."

He joined in the laughter which followed.

In the doorway he cut a pigeon-wing in which his thin, bowed legs

looked comically humorous.

Jud Carpenter was a power in the mill, standing as he did so near to

the management. To the poor, ignorant ones around him he was the

mouth-piece of the mill, and they feared him even more than they did

Kingsley himself, Kingsley with his ironical ways and lilting

eye-glasses. With them Jud's nod alone was sufficient.

They were still grouped around the office awaiting their turn. In the

faces of some were shrewdness, cunning, hypocrisy. Some looked out

through dull eyes, humbled and brow-beaten and unfeeling. But all of

them when they spoke to Jud Carpenter--Jud Carpenter who stood in

with the managers of the mill--became at once the grinning, fawning

framework of a human being.

"Yes, boys," said Jud patronizingly as Stallings went out, "this here

mill is a god-send to us po' folks who've got chillun to burn. They

ain't a day we ortenter git down on our knees an' thank Mr. Kingsley

an' Mister Travis there. You know I done took down that sign I useter

have hangin' up in my house in the hall--that sign which said, _God

bless our home_? I've put up another one now."

"What you done put up now, Jud?" grinned a tall weaver with that

blank look of expectancy which settles over the face of the middle

man in a negro minstrel troupe when he passes the stale question to

the end man, knowing the joke which was coming.

"Why, I've put up," said Jud brutally, "'_Suffer Little Children to

Come Unto Me_.' That's scriptural authority for cotton mills, ain't

it?"

The paying went on, after the uproarious laughter had subsided, and

down the long row only the clinking of silver was heard, intermingled

now and then with the shrill voice of some creature disputing with

Kingsley about her account. Generally it ran thus: "_It cyant be thet

away. Sixty hours at five cents an hour--wal, but didn't the chillun

wuck no longer than that? I cyant--I cyant--I jes' cyant live on that

little bit._"

Such it was, and it floated down the line to Helen like the wail of a

lost soul. When her time came Kingsley met her with a smile. Then he

gave her an order and Travis handed her a bright crisp ten-dollar

bill.

She looked at him in astonishment. "But--but," she said. "Surely, I

didn't earn all this, did I? Maggie--you had to pay Maggie for

teaching me this week. It was she who earned it. I cannot take it."

Kingsley smiled: "If you must know--though we promised her we would

not tell you," he said--"no, Miss Conway, you did not earn but five

dollars this week. The other five is Maggie's gift to you--she left

it here for you."

She looked at him stupidly--in dazed gratitude. Travis came forward:

"I've ordered Jim to take you home to-night. I cannot leave now."

And he led her out to where the trotters stood. He lifted her in,

pressing her hand as he did so--but she did not know it--she burned

with a strange fullness in her throat as she clutched her money, the

first she had ever earned, and thought of Maggie--Maggie, dying and

unselfish.

Work--it had opened a new life to her. Work--and never before had she

known the sweetness of it.

"Oh, father," she said when she reached home, "I have made some

money--I can support you and Lily now."

When Travis returned Jud Carpenter met him at the door.

"I had a mess o' trouble gittin' that gal into the mill. Huh! but

ain't she a beaut! I guess you 'orter tip me for throwin' sech a

peach as that into yo' arms. Oh, you're a sly one--" he went on

whisperingly--"the smoothest one with women I ever seed. But you'll

have to thank me for that queen. Guess I'll go down an' take a dram.

I want to git the lint out of my throat."

"I'll be down later," said Travis as he looked at his watch. "Charley

Biggers and I. It's our night to have a little fun with the boys."

"I'll see you there," said Jud.

The clinking of silver, questions, answers, and expostulations went

on. In the midst of it there was the sudden shrill wail of an angry

child.

"I wants some of my money, Paw--I wants to buy a ginger man."

Then came a cruel slap which was heard all over the room, and the boy

of ten, a wild-eyed and unkempt thing, staggered and grasped his face

where the blow fell.

"Take that, you sassy meddling up-start--you belong to me till you

are twenty-one years old. What 'ud you do with a ginger man 'cept to

eat it?" He cuffed the boy through the door and sent him flying home.

It was Joe Sykes, the wages of whose children kept him in active

drunkenness and chronic inertia. He was the champion loafer of the

town.

In a short time he had drawn a pocketful of silver, and going out

soon overtook Jud Carpenter.

"I tell you, Jud, we mus' hold these kids down--we heads of the

family. I've mighty nigh broke myself down this week a controllin'

mine. Goin' down to take a drink or two? Same to you."

CHAPTER VI

THE PLOT

A village bar-room is a village hell.

Jud Carpenter and Joe Hopper were soon there, and the silver their

children had earned at the mill began to go for drinks.

The drinks made them feel good. They resolved to feel better, so they

drank again. As they drank the talk grew louder. They were joined by

others from the town--ne'er-do-wells, who hung around the bar--and

others from the mill.

And so they drank and sang and danced and played cards and drank

again, and threw dice for more drinks.

It was nearly nine o'clock before the Bacchanal laugh began to ring

out at intervals--so easily distinguished from the sober laugh, in

that it carries in its closing tones the queer ring of the maniac's.

Only the mill men had any cash. The village loafers drank at their

expense, and on credit.

"And why should we not drink if we wish," said one of them. "Our

children earned the money and do we not own the children?"

Twice only were they interrupted. Once by the wife of a weaver who

came in and pleaded with her husband for part of their children's

money. Her tears touched the big-hearted Billy Buch, and as her

husband was too drunk to know what he was doing, Billy took what

money he had left and gave it to the wife. She had a sick child, she

told Billy Buch, and what money she had would not even buy the

medicine.

Billy squinted the corner of one eye and looked solemnly at the

husband: "He ha'f ten drinks in him ag'in, already. I vill gif you

pay for eet all for the child. An' here ees one dollar mo' from Billy

Buch. Now go, goot voman."

The other interruption was the redoubtable Mrs. Billings; her

brother, also a slubber, had arrived early, but had scarcely taken

two delightful, exquisite drinks before she came on the scene, her

eyes flashing, her hair disheveled, and her hand playing familiarly

with something under her apron.

Her presence threw them into a panic.

"Mine Gott!" said Billy, turning pale. "Eet es Meeses Billings an'

her crockery."

Half a dozen jubilants pointed out a long-haired man at a center

table talking proudly of his physical strength and bravery.

"Cris Ham?" beckoned Mrs. Billings, feeling nervously under her

apron. "Come with me!"

"I'll be along t'orectly, sis."

"You will come now," she said, and her hands began to move ominously

beneath her apron.

"To be sho'," he said as he walked out with her. "I didn't know you

felt that away about it, sis."

It was after ten o'clock when the quick roll of a buggy came up to

the door, and Richard Travis and Charley Biggers alighted.

They had both been drinking. Slowly, surely, Travis was going down in

the scale of degeneracy. Slowly the loose life he was leading was

lowering him to the level of the common herd. A few years ago he

would not have thought of drinking with his own mill hands. To-night

he was there, the most reckless of them all. Analyzed, it was for the

most part conceit with him; the low conceit of the superior intellect

which would mingle in infamy with the lowest to gain its ignorant

homage. For Intellect must have homage if it has to drag it from the

slums.

Charley Biggers was short and boyish, with a fat, round face. When he

laughed he showed a fine set of big, sensual teeth. His eyes were

jolly, flighty, insincere. Weakness was written all over him, from a

derby hat sitting back rakishly on his forehead to the small,

effeminate boot that fitted so neatly his small effeminate foot. He

had a small hand and his little sensual face had not a rough feature

on it. It was set off by a pudgy, half-formed dab of a nose that let

his breath in and out when his mouth happened to be shut. His eyes

were the eyes of one who sees no wrong in anything.

They came in and pulled off their gloves, daintily. They threw their

overcoats on a chair. Travis glanced around the circle of the four or

five who were left and said pompously:

"Come up, gentlemen, and have something at my expense." Then he

walked up to the bar.

They came. They considered it both a pleasure and an honor, as Jud

Carpenter expressed it, to drink with him.

"It is a good idea to mingle with them now and then," whispered

Travis to Charley. "It keeps me solid with them--health, gentlemen!"

Charley Biggers showed his good-natured teeth:

"Health, gentlemen," he grinned.

Then he hiccoughed through his weak little nose.

"Joe Hopper can't rise, gentlemen, Joe is drunk, an'--an' a widderer,

besides," hiccoughed Joe from below.

Joe had been a widower for a year. His wife, after being the mother

of eleven children, who now supported Joe in his drunkenness, had

passed away.

Then Joe burst into tears.

"What's up, Joe?" asked Jud kindly.

"Liza's dead," he wailed.

"Why, she's been dead a year," said Jud.

"Don't keer, Jud--I'm jes'--jes' beginnin' to feel it now"--and he

wept afresh.

It was too much for Charley Biggers, and he also wept. Travis looked

fixedly at the ceiling and recited portions of the Episcopal burial

service. Then Jud wept. They all wept.

"Gentlemen," said Travis solemnly, "let us drink to the health of the

departed Mrs. Hopper. Here's to her!"

This cheered all except Joe Hopper--he refused to be comforted. They

tried to console him, but he only wept the more. They went on

drinking and left him out, but this did not tend to diminish his

tears.

"Oh, Mister Hopper, shet up," said Jud peremptorily--"close up--I've

arranged for you to marry a grass-widder."

This cheered him greatly.

"O Jud--Jud--if I marry a grass-widder whut--whut'll I be then?"

"Why? a grasshopper, sure," said Travis.

They all roared. Then Jud winked at Travis and Travis winked at the

others. Then they sat around a table, all winking except poor Joe,

who continued to weep at the thought of being a grasshopper. He did

not quite understand how it was, but he knew that in some way he was

to be changed into a grasshopper, with long green wings and legs to

match.

"Gentlemen," said Jud seriously--"it is our duty to help out po' Joe.

Now, Joe, we've arranged it for you to marry Miss Kate Galloway--the

grass-widder."

"Not Miss Kate," said Travis with becoming seriousness.

"Why not her, Mr. Travis?" asked Jud, winking.

"Because his children will be Katydids," said Travis.

This brought on thundering roars of laughter and drinks all around.

Only Joe wept--wept to think his children would be katydids.

"Now, Joe, it's this way. I've talked it all over and arranged it.

That's what we've met for to-night--ain't it, gents?" said Jud.

"Sure--sure," they all exclaimed.

"Now, Joe, you mus' dry yo' tears an' become reconciled--we've got a

nice scheme fixed for you."

"I'll never be reconciled--never," wailed Joe. "Liza's dead an'--I'm

a grasshopper."

"Now, wait till I explain to you--but, dear, devoted friend,

everything is ready. The widder's been seen an' all you've got to do

is to come with us and get her."

"She's a mighty handsome 'oman," said Jud, winking his eye.

"Dear--dear frien's--all--I'm feelin' reconciled already"--said Joe.

They all joined in the roar. Jud winked. They all winked. Jud went

on:

"Joe, dear, dear Joe--we have had thy welfare at heart, as the books

say. We wanted thee to become a millionaire. Thou hast eleven

children to begin with. They pay you--"

"Eighteen dollars a week, clear,"--said Joe proudly.

"Well, now, Joe--it's all arranged--you marry the widder an' in the

course of time you'll have eleven mo'. That's another eighteen

dollars--or thirty-six dollars a week clear in the mills."

"Now, but I hadn't thought of that," said Joe

enthusiastically--"that's a fact. When--when did you say the

ceremony'd be performed?"

"Hold on," said Jud, "now, we've studied this thing all out for you.

You're a Mormon--the only one of us that is a Mormon--openly."

They all laughed.

"Openly--" he went on--"you've j'ined the Mormon church here up in

the mountains."

"But we don't practise polygamy--now"--said Joe.

"That's only on account of the Grand Jury and the law--not yo'

religion. You see--you'll marry an' go to Utah--but--es the kids come

you'll sen' 'em all down here to the mills--every one a kinder livin'

coupon. All any man's got to do in this country to git rich is to

marry enough wives."

"Can I do that--do the marryin' in Utah an' keep sendin' the--the

chilluns down to the mill?" His eyes glittered.

"Sart'inly"--said Jud--"sure!"

"Then there's Miss Carewe"--he went on--"you haf'ter cal'clate on

feedin' several wives in one, with her. But say eleven mo' by her.

That's thirty-seven mo'."

Joe jumped up.

"Is she willin'?"

"Done seen her," said Jud; "she say come on."

"Hold on," said Travis with feigned anger. "Hold on. Joe is fixin' to

start a cotton-mill of his own. That'll interfere with the Acme.

No--no--we must vote it down. We mustn't let Joe do it."

Joe had already attempted to rise and start after his wives. But in

the roar of laughter that followed he sat down and began to weep

again for Liza.

It was nearly midnight. Only Travis, Charley Biggers and Jud remained

sober enough to talk. Charley was telling of Tilly and her wondrous

beauty.

"Now--it's this way," he hiccoughed--"I've got to go off to

school--but--but--I've thought of a plan to marry her first, with a

bogus license and preacher."

There was a whispered conversation among them, ending in a shout of

applause.

"What's the matter with you takin' yo' queen at the same time?" asked

Jud of Travis.

Travis, drunk as he was, winced to think that he would ever permit

Jud Carpenter to suggest what he had intended should only be known to

himself. His tongue was thick, his brain whirled, and there were gaps

in his thoughts; but through the thickness and heaviness he thought

how low he had fallen. Lower yet when, despite all his vanishing

reserve, all his dignity and exclusiveness, he laughed sillily and

said:

"Just what I had decided to do--two queens and an ace."

They all cheered drunkenly.

CHAPTER VII

MRS. WESTMORE TAKES A HAND

"What are you playing, Alice?"

The daughter arose from the piano and kissed her mother, holding for

a moment the pretty face, crowned with white hair, between her two

palms.

"It--it is an old song which Tom and I used to love to sing."

The last of the sentence came so slowly that it sank almost into

silence, as of one beginning a sentence and becoming so absorbed in

the subject as to forget the speech. Then she turned again to the

piano, as if to hide from her mother the sorrow which had crept into

her face.

"You should cease to think of that. Such things are dreams--at

present we are confronted by very disagreeable realities."

"Dreams--ah, mother mine"--she answered with forced cheeriness--"but

what would life be without them?"

"For one thing, Alice"--and she took the daughter's place at the

piano and began to play snatches of an old waltz tune--"it would be

free from all the morbid unnaturalness, the silliness, the froth of

things. There is too much hardness in every life--in the world--in

the very laws of life, for such things ever to have been part of the

original plan. For my part, I think they are the product of man and

wine or women or morphine or some other narcotic."

"We make the dreams of life, but the realities of it make us," she

added.

"Oh, no, mother. 'Tis the dreams that make the realities. Not a great

established fact exists but it was once the vision of a dreamer. Our

dreams to-day become the realities of to-morrow."

"Do you believe Tom is not dead--that he will one day come back?"

asked her mother abruptly.

It was twilight and the fire flickered, lighting up the library. But

in the flash of it Mrs. Westmore saw Alice's cheek whiten in a

hopeless, helpless, stricken way.

Then she walked to the window and looked out on the darkness fast

closing in on the lawn, clustering denser around the evergreens and

creeping ghostlike toward the dim sky line which shone clear in the

open.

The very helplessness of her step, her silence, her numbed, yearning

look across the lawn told Mrs. Westmore of the death of all hope

there.

She followed her daughter and put her arms impulsively around her.

"I should not have hurt you so, Alice. I only wanted to show you how

worse than useless it is ... but to change the subject, I do wish to

speak to you of--our condition."

Alice was used to her mother's ways--her brilliancy--her pointed

manner of going at things--her quick change of thought--of mood, and

even of temperament. An outsider would have judged Mrs. Westmore to

be fickle with a strong vein of selfishness and even of egotism.

Alice only knew that she was her mother; who had suffered much; who

had been reduced by poverty to a condition straitened even to

hardships. To help her the daughter knew that she was willing to make

any sacrifice. Unselfish, devoted, clear as noonday in her own ideas

of right and wrong, Alice's one weakness was her blind devotion to

those she loved. A weakness beautiful and even magnificent, since it

might mean a sacrifice of her heart for another. The woman who gives

her time, her money, her life, even, to another gives but a small

part of her real self. But there is something truly heroic when she

throws in her heart also. For when a woman has given that she has

given all; and because she has thrown it in cold and dead--a lifeless

thing--matters not; in the poignancy of the giving it is gone from

her forever and she may not recall it even with the opportunity of

bringing it back to life.

She who gives her all, but keeps her heart, is as a priest reading

mechanically the Sermon on the Mount from the Bible. But she who

gives her heart never to take it back again gives as the Christ dying

on the Cross.

"Now, here is the legal paper about"--

Her voice failed and she did not finish the sentence.

Alice took the paper and glanced at it. She flushed and thrust it

into her pocket. They were silent a while and Mrs. Westmore sat

thinking of the past. Alice knew it by the great reminiscent light

which gleamed in her eyes. She thought of the time when she had

servants, money, friends unlimited--of the wealth and influence of

her husband--of the glory of Westmoreland.

Every one has some secret ambition kept from the eyes of every living

soul--often even to die in its keeper's breast. It is oftenest a mean

ambition of which one is ashamed and so hides it from the world. It

is often the one weakness. Alice never knew what was her mother's.

She did not indeed know that she had one, for this one thing Mrs.

Westmore had kept inviolately secret. But in her heart there had

always rankled a secret jealousy when she thought of The Gaffs. It

had been there since she could remember--a feeling cherished

secretly, too, by her husband: for in everything their one idea had

been that Westmoreland should surpass The Gaffs,--that it should be

handsomer, better kept, more prosperous, more famous.

Now, Westmoreland was gone--this meant the last of it. It would be

sold, even the last hundred acres of it, with the old home on it.

Gone--gone--all her former glory--all her family tradition, her

memories, her very name.

Gone, and The Gaffs remained!

Remained in all its intactness--its beauty--its well equipped barns

with all the splendor of its former days. For so great was the

respect of Schofield's army for the character of Colonel Jeremiah

Travis that his home escaped the torch when it was applied to many

others in the Tennessee Valley. And Richard Travis had been shrewd

enough after the war to hold his own. Joining the party of the negro

after the war, he had been its political ruler in the county. And the

Honorable Richard Travis had been offered anything he wanted. At

present he was State Senator. He with others called himself a

Republican--one of the great party of Lincoln to which the negroes

after their enfranchisement united themselves. It was a fearful

misnomer. The Republican party in the South, composed of ninety-nine

ignorant negroes to one renegade white, about as truly represented

the progressive party of Lincoln as a black vampire the ornithology

of all lands. Indeed, since the war, there has never been in the

South either a Republican or a Democratic party. The party line is

not drawn on belief but on race and color. The white men, believing

everything they please from free trade to protection, vote a ticket

which they call Democratic. The negroes, and a few whites who allied

themselves with them for the spoils of office, vote the other ticket.

Neither of them represent anything but a race issue.

To this negro party belonged Richard Travis--and the price of his

infamy had been _Honorable_ before his name.

But Mrs. Westmore cared nothing for this. She only knew that he was a

leader of men, was handsome, well reared and educated, and that he

owned The Gaffs, her old rival. And that there it stood, a fortune--a

refuge--a rock--offered to her and her daughter, offered by a man

who, whatever his other faults, was brave and dashing, sincere in his

idolatrous love for her daughter. That he would make Alice happy she

did not doubt; for Mrs. Westmore's idea of happiness was in having

wealth and position and a splendid name. Having no real heart, how

was it possible for her to know, as Alice could know, the happiness

of love?

An eyeless fish in the river of Mammoth Cave might as well try to

understand what light meant.

He would make Alice happy, of course he would; he would make her happy

by devotion, which he was eager to give her with an unstinted hand.

Alice needed it, she herself needed it. It was common sense to accept

it,--business sense. It was opportunity--fate. It was the reward of a

life--the triumph of it--to have her old rival--enemy--bound and

presented to her.

And nothing stood between her and the accomplishment of it all but the

foolish romance of her daughter's youth.

And so she sat building her castles and thinking:

"With The Gaffs, with Richard Travis and his money would come all I

wish, both for her and for me. Once more I would hold the social

position I once held: once more I would be something in the world.

And Alice, of course, she would be happy; for her's is one of those

trusting natures which finds first where her duty points and then

makes her heart follow."

But Mrs. Westmore wisely kept silent. She did not think aloud. She

knew too well that Alice's sympathetic, unselfish, obedient spirit

was thinking it over.

She sat down by her mother and took up a pet kitten which had come

purring in, begging for sympathy. She stroked it thoughtfully.

Mrs. Westmore read her daughter's thoughts:

"So many people," the mother said after a while, "have false ideas of

love and marriage. Like ignorant people when they get religion, they

think a great and sudden change must come over them--changing their

very lives."

She laughed her ringing little laugh: "I told you of your father's

and my love affair. Why, I was engaged to three other men at the same

time--positively I was. And I would have been just as happy with any

of them."

"Why did you marry father, then?"

Her mother laughed and tapped the toe of her shoe playfully against

the fender: "It was a silly reason; he swam the Tennessee River on

his horse to see me one day, when the ferry-boat was a wreck. I

married him."

"Would not the others have done as well?"

"Yes, but I knew your father was brave. You cannot love a coward--no

woman can. But let a man be brave--no matter what his faults are--the

rest is all a question of time. You would soon learn to love him as I

did your father."

Mrs. Westmore was wise. She changed the subject.

"Have you noticed Uncle Bisco lately, mother?" asked Alice after a

while.

"Why, yes; I intended to ask you about him."

"He says there are threats against his life--his and Aunt Charity's.

He had a terrible dream last night, and he would have me to interpret

it."

"Quite Biblical," laughed her mother. "What was it?"

"They have been very unhappy all day--you know the negroes have been

surly and revengeful since the election of Governor Houston--they

believe they will be put back into slavery and they know that Uncle

Bisco voted with his white friends. It is folly, of course--but they

beat Captain Roland's old body servant nearly to death because he

voted with his old master. And Uncle Bisco has heard threats that he

and Aunt Charity will be visited in a like manner. I think it will

soon blow over, though at times I confess I am often worried about

them, living alone so far off from us, in the cabin in the wood."

"What was Uncle Bisco's dream?" asked Mrs. Westmore.

"Why, he said an angel had brought him water to drink from a

Castellonian Spring. Now, I don't know what a Castellonian Spring is,

but that was the word he used, and that he was turned into a live-oak

tree, old and moss-grown. Then he stood in the forest surrounded by

scrub-oaks and towering over them and other mean trees when suddenly

they all fell upon him and cut him down. Now, he says, these

scrub-oaks are the radical negroes who wish to kill him for voting

with the whites. You will laugh at my interpretation," she went on.

"I told him that the small black oaks were years that still stood

around him, but that finally they would overpower him and he would

sink to sleep beneath them, as we must all eventually do. I think it

reassured him--but, mamma, I am uneasy about the two old people."

"If the Bishop were here--"

"He would sleep in the house with a shotgun, I fear," laughed Alice.

They were silent at last: "When did you say Richard was coming again,

Alice?"

"To-morrow night--and--and--I hear Clay in his laboratory. I will go

and talk to him before bed time."

She stooped and kissed her mother. To her surprise, she found her

mother's arms around her neck and heard her whisper brokenly:

"Alice--Alice--you could solve it all if you would.

Think--think--what it would mean to me--to all of us--oh, I can stand

this poverty no longer--this fight against that which we cannot

overcome."

She burst into a flood of tears. Never before had Alice seen her show

her emotions over their condition, and it hurt her, stabbed her to

the vital spot of all obedience and love.

With moistened eyes she went into her brother's room.

And Mrs. Westmore wrote a note to Richard Travis. It did not say so

in words but it meant: "_Come and be bold--you have won._"

CHAPTER VIII

A QUESTION BROUGHT HOME

"I shall go to Boston next week to meet the directors of the mill and

give in my annual report."

The three had been sitting in Westmoreland library this Sunday

night--for Richard Travis came regularly every Sunday night, and he

had been talking about the progress of the mill and the great work it

was doing for the poor whites of the valley. "I imagine," he added,

"that they will be pleased with the report this year."

"But are you altogether pleased with it in all its features?" asked

Alice thoughtfully.

"Why, what do you mean, Alice?" asked her mother, surprised.

"Just this, mother, and I have been thinking of talking to Richard

about it for some time."

Travis took his cigar out of his mouth and looked at her quizzically.

She flushed under his gaze and added: "If I wasn't saying what I am

for humanity's sake I would be willing to admit that it was

impertinent on my part. But are you satisfied with the way you work

little children in that mill, Richard, and are you willing to let it

go on without a protest before your directors? You have such a fine

opportunity for good there," she added in all her old beautiful

earnestness.

"Oh, Alice, my dear, that is none of our affair. Now I should not

answer her, Richard," and Mrs. Westmore tapped him playfully on the

arm.

"Frankly, I am not," he said to Alice. "I think it is a horrible

thing. But how are we to remedy it? There is no law on the subject at

all in Alabama--"

"Except the broader, unwritten law," she added.

Travis laughed: "You will find that it cuts a small figure with

directors when it comes in conflict with the dividends of a

corporation."

"But how is it there?" she asked,--"in New England?"

"They have seen the evils of it and they have a law against child

labor. The age is restricted to twelve years, and every other year

they must go to a public school before they may be taken back into

the mill. But even with all that, the law is openly violated, as it

is in England, where they have been making efforts to throttle the

child-labor problem for nearly a century, and after whose law the New

England law was patterned."

"Why, by the parents of the children falsely swearing to their age."

Alice looked at him in astonishment.

"Do you really mean it?" she asked.

"Why, certainly--and it would be the same here. If we had a law the

lazy parents of many of them would swear falsely to their children's

ages."

"There could be some way found to stop that," she said.

"It has not been found yet," he added. "What is to prevent two

designing parents swearing that an eight year old child is

twelve--and these little poor whites," he added with a laugh, "all

look alike from eight to sixteen--scrawny--hard and half-starved. In

many cases no living man could swear whether they are six or twelve."

"If you really should make it a rule to refuse all children under

twelve," she added, "tell me how many would go out of your mill."

"In other words, how many under twelve do we work there?" he asked.

She nodded.

He thought a while and then said: "About one hundred and

twenty-five."

She started: "That is terrible--terrible! Couldn't you--couldn't you

bring the subject up before the directors for--for--"

"Your sake--yes"--he said, admiringly.

"Humanity's--God's--Right's--helpless, ignorant, dying children!"

"Do you know," he added quickly, "how many idle parents these hundred

and twenty-five children support--actually support? Why, about fifty.

Now do you see? The whole influence of these fifty people will be to

violate the law--to swear the children are twelve or over. Yes, I am

opposed to it--so is Kingsley--but we are powerless."

"My enthusiasm has been aroused, of late, on the subject," Alice

went on, "by the talks and preaching of my old friend, Mr. Watts."

Travis frowned: "The old Bishop of Cottontown," he added

ironically--"and he had better stop it--he will get into trouble

yet."

"Why?"

"Because he is doing the mill harm."

"And I don't suppose one should do a corporation harm," she said

quickly,--"even to do humanity good?"

"Oh, Alice, let us drop so disagreeable a subject," said her mother.

"Come, Richard and I want some music."

"Any way," said Alice, rising, "I do very much hope you will bring

the subject up in your visit to the directors. It has grown on me

under the talks of the old Bishop and what I have seen myself--it has

become a nightmare to me."

"I don't think it is any of our business at all," spoke up Mrs.

Westmore quickly.

Alice turned her big, earnest eyes and beautiful face on her mother.

"Do you remember when I was six years old?" she asked.

"Of course I do."

"Suppose--suppose--that our poverty had come to us then, and you and

papa had died and left brother and me alone and friendless. Then

suppose we had been put into that mill to work fourteen hours a

day--we--your own little ones--brother and I"--

Mrs. Westmore sprang up with a little shriek and put her hands over

her daughter's mouth.

Richard Travis shrugged his shoulders: "I had not thought of it that

way myself," he said. "That goes home to one."

Richard Travis was always uplifted in the presence of Alice. It was

wonderful to him what a difference in his feelings, his behavior, his

ideas, her simple presence exerted. As he looked at her he thought of

last night's debauch--the bar-room--the baseness and vileness of it

all. He thought of his many amours. He saw the purity and grandeur of

her in this contrast--all her queenliness and beauty and simplicity.

He even thought of Maggie and said to himself: "Suppose Alice should

know all this.... My God! I would have no more chance of winning her

than of plucking a star from the sky!"

He thought of Helen and it made him serious. Helen's was a different

problem from Maggie's. Maggie was a mill girl--poor, with a

bed-ridden father. She was nameless. But Helen--she was of the same

blood and caste of this beautiful woman before him, whom he fully

expected to make his wife. There was danger in Helen--he must act

boldly, but decisively--he must take her away with him--out of the

State, the South even. Distance would be his protection, and her

pride and shame would prevent her ever letting her whereabouts or her

fate be known.

Cold-bloodedly, boldly, and with clear-cut reasoning, all this ran

through his mind as he stood looking at Alice Westmore.

We are strangely made--the best of us. Men have looked on the Madonna

and wondered why the artist had not put more humanity there--had not

given her a sensual lip, perhaps. And on the Cross, the Christ was

thinking of a thief.

Two hours later he was bidding her good-bye.

"Next Sunday, do you remember--Alice--next Sunday night you are to

tell me--to fix the day, Sweet?"

"Did mother tell you that?" she asked. "She should let me speak for

myself."

But somehow he felt that she would. Indeed he knew it as he kissed

her hand and bade her good-night.

Richard Travis had ridden over to Westmoreland that Sunday night, and

as he rode back, some two miles away, and within the shadows of a

dense clump of oaks which bordered the road, he was stopped by two

dusky figures. They stood just on the edge of the forest and came out

so suddenly that the spirited saddle mare stopped and attempted to

wheel and bolt. But Travis, controlling her with one hand and,

suspecting robbers, had drawn his revolver with the other, when one

of them said:

"Friends, don't shoot."

"Give the countersign," said Travis with ill-concealed irritation.

"Union League, sir. I am Silos, sir."

Travis put his revolver back into his overcoat pocket and quieted his

mare.

The two men, one a negro and the other a mulatto, came up to his

saddle-skirt and stood waiting respectfully.

"You should have awaited me at The Gaffs, Silos."

"We did, sir," said the mulatto, "but the boys are all out here in

the woods, and we wanted to hold them together. We didn't know when

you would come home."

"Oh, it's all right," said Travis pettishly--"only you came near

catching one of my bullets by mistake. I thought you were Jack

Bracken and his gang."

The mulatto smiled and apologized. He was a bright fellow and the

barber of the town.

"We wanted to know, sir, if you were willing for us to do the work

to-night, sir?"

"Why bother me about it--no need for me to know, Silos, but one thing

I must insist upon. You may whip them--frighten them, but nothing

else, mind you, nothing else."

"But you are the commander of the League--we wanted your consent."

Travis bent low over the saddle and talked earnestly to the man a

while. It was evidently satisfactory to the other, for he soon

beckoned his companion and started off into the woods.

"Have you representatives from each camp present, Silos?"

The mulatto turned and came back.

"Yes--but the toughest we could get. I'll not stay myself to see it.

I don't like such work, sir--only some one has to do it for the

cause--the cause of freedom, sir."

"Of course--why of course," said Travis. "Old Bisco and his kind are

liable to get all you negroes put back into slavery--if the Democrats

succeed again as they have just done. Give them a good scare."

"We'll fix him to-night, boss," said the black one, grinning good

naturedly. Then he added to himself: "Yes, I'll whip 'em--to death."

"I heard a good deal of talk among the boys, to-night, sir," said the

mulatto. "They all want you for Congress next time."

"Well, we'll talk about that, Silos, later. I must hurry on."

He started, then wheeled suddenly:

"Oh, say, Silos--"

The latter came back.

"Do your work quietly to-night--Just a good scare--If you

disturb"--he pointed to the roof of Westmoreland in the distance

showing above the beech tops. "You know how foolish they are about

old Bisco and his wife--"

"They'll never hear anything." He walked off, saying to himself: "A

nigger who is a traitor to his race ought to be shot, but for fear of

a noise and disturbin' the ladies--I'll hang 'em both,--never fear."

Travis touched his mare with the spur and galloped off.

Uncle Bisco and his wife were rudely awakened. It was nearly midnight

when the door of their old cabin was broken open by a dozen black,

ignorant negroes, who seized and bound the old couple before they

could cry out. Bisco was taken out into the yard under a tree, while

his wife, pleading and begging for her husband's life, was tied to

another tree.

"Bisco," said the leader, "we cum heah to pay you back fur de blood

you drawed frum our backs whilst you hilt de whip ob slabery an'

oberseed fur white fo'ks. An' fur ebry lick you giv' us, we gwi' giv'

you er dozen on your naked back, an' es fur dis ole witch," said the

brute, pointing to old Aunt Charity, "we got de plain docyments on

her fur witchin' Br'er Moses' little gal--de same dat she mek hab

fits, an' we gwi' hang her to a lim'."

The old man drew himself up. In every respect--intelligence, physical

and moral bravery--he was superior to the crowd around him. Raised

with the best class of whites, he had absorbed many of their virtues,

while in those around him were many who were but a few generations

removed from the cowardice of darkest Africa.

"I nurver hit you a lick you didn't deserve, suh, I nurver had you

whipped but once an' dat wus for stealin' a horg which you sed

yo'se'f you stole. You ken do wid me es you please," he went on, "you

am menny an' kin do it, an' I am ole an' weak. But ef you hes got

enny soul, spare de po' ole 'oman who ain't nurver dun nothin' but

kindness all her life. De berry chile you say she witched hes hed

'leptis fits all its life an' Cheerity ain't dun nuffin' but take it

medicine to kwore it. Don't hurt de po' ole 'oman," he exclaimed.

"Let 'em do whut dey please wid me, Bisco," she said: "Dey can't do

nuffin' to dis po' ole body but sen' de tired soul on dat journey

wher de buterful room is already fix fur it, es you read dis berry

night. But spare de ole man, spare 'im fur de secun' blessin' which

Gord dun promised us, an' which boun' ter cum bekase Gord can't lie.

O Lord," she said suddenly, "remember thy po' ole servants dis

night."

But her appeals were fruitless. Already the "witch council" of the

blacks was being formed to decide their fate. And it was an uncanny

scene that the moon looked down on that night, under the big trees on

the banks of the Tennessee. They formed in a circle around the "Witch

Finder," an old negro whose head was as white as snow, and who was so

ignorant he could scarcely speak even negro dialect.

Both his father and mother were imported from Africa, and the former

was "Witch Finder" for his tribe there. The negroes said the African

Witch Finder had imparted his secret only to his son, and that it had

thus been handed down in one family for many generations.

The old negro now sat upon the ground in the center of the circle. He

was a small, bent up, wiry-looking black, with a physiognomy closely

resembling a dog's, which he took pains to cultivate by drawing the

plaits of his hair down like the ears of a hound, while he shaped his

few straggling strands of beard into the under jaw of the same

animal. Three big negroes had led him, blind-folded, into the circle,

chanting a peculiar song, the music of which was weird and uncanny.

And now as he sat on the ground the others regarded him with the

greatest reverence and awe. It was in one of the most dismal portions

of the swamp, a hundred yards or two from the road that led to the

ferry at the river. Here the old people had been brought from their

homes and tied to this spot where the witch council was to be held.

Before seating himself the Witch Finder had drawn three rings within

a circle on the ground with the thigh bone of a dog. Then,

unbuttoning his red flannel shirt, he took from his bosom, suspended

around his neck, a kind of purse, made from the raw-hide of a calf,

with white hair on one side and red on the other, and from this bag

he proceeded to take out things which would have given Shakespeare

ideas for his witch scene in Macbeth. A little black ring, made of

the legs of the black spider and bound together with black horse

hair; a black thimble-like cup, not much longer than the cup of an

acorn, made of the black switch of a mule containing the liver of a

scorpion. The horny head and neck of the huge black beetle, commonly

known to negroes as the black Betsy Bug; the rattle and button of a

rattlesnake; the fang-tooth of a cotton-mouth moccasin, the left hind

foot of a frog, seeds of the stinging nettle, and pods of peculiar

plants, all incased in a little sack made of a mole's hide. These

were all given sufficient charm by a small round cotton yarn, in the

center of which was a drop of human blood. They were placed on the

ground around him, but he held the ball of cotton yarn in his hand,

and ordered that the child be brought into the ring. The poor thing

was frightened nearly to death at sight of the Witch Finder, and when

he began slowly to unwind his ball of cotton thread and chant his

monotonous funeral song, she screamed in terror. At a signal from the

"Witch Finder," Aunt Charity was dragged into the ring, her hands

tied behind her. The sight of such brutality was too much for the

child, and she promptly had another fit. No other evidence was

needed, and the Witch Finder declared that Aunt Charity was Queen of

Witches. The council retired, and in a few minutes their decision was

made: Uncle Bisco was to be beaten to death with hickory flails and

his old wife hung to the nearest tree. Their verdict being made, two

stout negroes came forward to bind the old man to a tree with his

arms around it. At sight of these ruffians the old woman broke out

into triumphant song:

"O we mos' to de home whar we all gwi' res',

Cum, dear Lord, cum soon!

An' take de ole weary ones unto yo' bres',

Cum, dear Lord, cum soon!

Fur we ole an' we tired an' we hungry fur yo' sight,

An' our lim's dey am weary, fur we fou't er good fight,

An' we longin' fur de lan' ob lub an' light--

Cum, dear Lord, cum soon."

And it was well that she sang that song, for it stopped three

horsemen just as they forded the creek and turned their horses' heads

into the lane that led to the cabin. One who was tall and with square

shoulders sat his horse as if born in the saddle. Above, his dark

hair was streaked with white, but the face was calm and sad, though

lit up now with two keen and kindly eyes which glowed with suppressed

excitement. It was the face of splendid resolve and noble purpose,

and the horse he rode was John Paul Jones. The other was the village

blacksmith. A negro followed them, mounted on a raw-bone pony, and

carrying his master's Enfield rifle.

The first horseman was just saying: "Things look mighty natural at

the old place, Eph; I wonder if the old folks will know us? It seems

to me--"

He pulled up his horse with a jerk. He heard singing just over to his

left in the wood. Both horsemen sat listening:

O we mos' to de do' ob our Father's home--

Lead, dear Lord, lead on!

An' we'll nurver mo' sorrer an' nurver mo' roam--

Lead, dear Lord, lead on!

An' we'll meet wid de lam's dat's gohn on befo'

An' we lie in de shade ob de good shepherd's do',

An' he'll wipe away all ob our tears as dey flow--

Lead, dear Lord, lead on!

"Do you know that voice, Eph?" cried the man in front to his body

servant. "We must hurry"; and he touched the splendid horse with the

heel of his riding boot.

But the young negro had already plunged two spurs into his pony's

flanks and was galloping toward the cabin.

It was all over when the white rider came up. Two brutes had been

knocked over with the short heavy barrel of an Enfield rifle. There

was wild scattering of others through the wood. An old man was

clinging in silent prayer to his son's knees and an old woman was

clinging around his neck, and saying:

"Praise God--who nurver lies--it's little Ephrum--come home ag'in."

Then they looked up and the old man raised his hands in a pitiful

tumult of joy and fear and reverence as he said:

"An' Marse Tom, so help me God--a-ridin' John Paul Jones!"

CHAPTER IX

THE PEDIGREE OF ACHIEVEMENT

Man may breed up all animals but himself. Strive as he may, the laws

of heredity are hidden. "Like produces like or the likeness of an

ancestor" is the unalterable law of the lower animal. Not so with

man--he is a strange anomaly. Breed him up--up--and then from his

high breeding will come reversion. From pedigrees and plumed hats and

ruffled shirts come not men, but pygmies--things which in the real

fight of life are but mice to the eagles which have come up from the

soil with the grit of it in their craws and the strength of it in

their talons.

We stop in wonder--balked. Then we see that we cannot breed men--they

are born; not in castles, but in cabins.

And why in cabins? For therein must be the solution. And the solution

is plain: It is work--work that does it.

We cannot breed men unless work--achievement--goes with it.

From the loins of great horses come greater horses; for the pedigree

of work--achievement--is there. Unlike man, the race-horse is kept

from degeneracy by work. Each colt that comes must add achievement

to pedigree when he faces the starter, or he goes to the shambles or

the surgeon.

Why may not man learn this simple lesson--the lesson of work--of

pedigree, but the pedigree of achievement?

The son who would surpass his father must do more than his father

did. Two generations of idleness will beget nonentities, and three,

degenerates.

The preacher, the philosopher, the poet, the ruler--it matters not

what his name--he who first solves the problem of how to keep mankind

achieving will solve the problem of humanity.

And now to Helen Conway for the first time in her life this simple

thing was happening--she was working--she was earning--she was

supporting herself and Lily and her father. Not only that, but

gradually she was learning to know what the love of one like Clay

meant--unselfish, devoted, true.

If to every tempted woman in the world could be given work, and to

work achievement, and to achievement independence, there would be few

fallen ones.

All the next week Helen went to the mill early--she wanted to go. She

wanted to earn more money and keep Lily out of the mill. And she went

with a light heart, because for the first time in her life since she

could remember, her father was sober. Helen's earnings changed even

him. There was something so noble in her efforts that it uplifted

even the drunkard. In mingled shame and pride he thought it out:

Supported by his daughter--in a mill and such a daughter! He arose

from it all white-lipped with resolve: "_I will be a Conway again!_"

He said it over and over. He swore it.

It is true he was not entirely free from that sickening, sour,

accursed smell with which she had associated him all her life. But

that he was himself, that he was making an earnest effort, she knew

by his neatly brushed clothes, his clean linen, his freshly shaved

face, his whole attire which betokened the former gentleman.

"How handsome he must have been when he was once a Conway!" thought

Helen.

He kissed his daughters at the breakfast table. He chatted with them,

and though he said nothing about it, even Lily knew that he had

resolved to reform.

After breakfast Helen left him, with Lily sitting on her father's

lap, her face bright with the sunshine of it:

"If papa would always be like this"--and she patted his cheek.

Conway started. The very intonation of her voice, her gesture, was of

the long dead mother.

Tears came to his eyes. He kissed her: "Never again, little daughter,

will I take another drop."

She looked at him seriously: "Say with God's help--" she said simply.

"Mammy Maria said it won't count unless you say that."

Conway smiled. "I will do it my own self."

But Lily only shook her head in a motherly, scolding way.

"With God's help, then," he said.

Never was an Autumn morning more beautiful to Helen as she walked

across the fields to the mill. She had learned a nearer way, one

which lay across hill and field. The path ran through farms, chiefly

The Gaffs, and cut across the hills and meadow land. Through little

dells, amid fragrant groves of sweet gum and maples, their beautiful

many-colored leaves now scattered in rich profusion around. Then down

little hollows where the brooks sputtered and frothed and foamed

along, the sun all the time darting in and out, as the waters ran

first in sunshine and then in shadow. And above, the winds were so

still, that the jumping of the squirrel in the hickories made the

only noise among the leaves which still clung to the boughs.

All so beautiful, and never had Helen been so happy.

She was earning a living--she was saving Lily from the mill and her

father from temptation.

Her path wound along an old field and plunged into scrub cedar and

glady rocks. A covey of quail sprang up before her and she screamed,

frightened at the sudden thunder of their wings.

Then the path ran through a sedge field, white with the tall silvered

panicled-leaves of the life-everlasting.

Beyond her she saw the smoke-stack of the mill, and a short cut

through a meadow of The Gaffs would soon take her there.

She failed to see a warning on the fence which said: _Keep

out--Danger._

Through the bars she went, intent only on soon reaching the mill

beyond and glorying in the strong rich smell of autumn in leaf and

grass and air.

"What a beautiful horse that is in the pasture," she thought, and

then her attention went to a meadow lark flushed and exultant. She

heard shouts, and now--why was Jim, the stable boy, running toward

her so fast, carrying a pitchfork in his hands and shouting:

"Whoa--there, Antar--Antar,--you, sir!"

And the horse! One look was enough. With ears laid back, and mouth

wide open, with eyes blazing with the fire of fury he was plunging

straight at her.