rved and gloomy; eyes would not light up,
even when spoken to; and Rollo tried the expedient pretty
often. Yet the children were the worst. Little things, and
others older, but all worn-looking, sadly pale, very hopeless,
going back and forth at their work like so many parts of the
inexorable machinery. Here Rollo now and then got a smile,
that gleamed out as a rare thing in that atmosphere. On the
whole, the outer air seemed strange and sweet to the two when
they came out into it, and not more sweet than strange. Where
they had been, surely the beauty, and the freedom, and the
promise, of the pure oxygen and the blue heaven, were all shut
out and denied and forgotten.

'There is work for somebody to do,' said Rollo thoughtfully,
when the mill door was shut behind them.

The girl looked at him gravely, then away.

'Do all mill people look so?' she said. 'Or is it just Morton
Hollow?'

'They do not all look so. At least I am told this is a very
uncommon case for this country. Yet no doubt there are others,
and it is not--"just Morton Hollow." Suppose, for the sake of
argument, that all mill people look so; what deduction would
you draw?'

'Well, that I should like to have the mills,' said Wych Hazel.

They walked slowly on through the Hollow. The place was still
and empty; all the hands being in the mills; the buzz of
machinery within, as they passed one, was almost the only
sound abroad. The cottages were forlorn looking places; set
anywhere, without reference to the consideration whether space
for a garden ground was to be had. No such thing as a real
garden could be seen. No flowers bloomed anywhere; no token of
life's comfort or pleasure hung about the poor dwellings.
Poverty and dirt and barrenness; those three facts struck the
visitor's eye and heart. A certain degree of neatness and
order indeed was enforced about the road and the outside of
the houses; nothing to give the feeling of the sweet reality
within. The only person they saw to speak to was a woman
sitting at an open door crying. It would not have occurred to
most people that she was one 'to speak to'; however, Rollo
stepped a little out of the road to open communication with
her. His companion followed, but the words were German.

'What is the matter?' she asked as they turned to go on their
way.

'Do you remember the girl that came to Gyda's that day you
were there? this is her mother. Truedchen, she says, has been
sick for two weeks; v