she died, a couple of months ago, Lee's been playin' the big man,
spendin' the old lady's money, and enjoyin' himself. Did you see that
hoss'n'-buggy hitched in front of the ho-tel?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's Lee's buggy. He hires it from us. We send it up every
mornin' at nine o'clock, when Lee gits up. When he's had his breakfas'
he comes out an' gits in the buggy, an' drives to the barber-shop nex'
door, gits out, goes in an' gits shaved, comes out, climbs in the
buggy, an' drives back to the ho-tel. Then he talks to the cook, comes
out an' gits in the buggy, an' drives half-way 'long that side of the
square, about two hund'ed feet, to the grocery sto', and orders half a
pound of coffee or a pound of lard, or whatever the ho-tel needs for
the day, then comes out, climbs in the buggy and drives back. When the
mail comes in, if he's expectin' any mail, he drives 'cross the square
to the post-office, an' then drives back to the ho-tel. There's other
lazy men roun' here, but Lee Dickson takes the cake. However, it's
money in our pocket, as long as it keeps up."

"I shouldn't think it would keep up long," returned the colonel. "How
can such a hotel prosper?"

"It don't!" replied the liveryman, "but it's the best in town."

"I don't see how there could be a worse," said the colonel.

"There couldn't--it's reached bed rock."

The buggy was ready by this time, and the colonel set out, with a
black driver, to find the Excelsior Cotton Mills. They proved to be
situated in a desolate sandhill region several miles out of town. The
day was hot; the weather had been dry, and the road was deep with a
yielding white sand into which the buggy tires sank. The horse soon
panted with the heat and the exertion, and the colonel, dressed in
brown linen, took off his hat and mopped his brow with his
handkerchief. The driver, a taciturn Negro--most of the loquacious,
fun-loving Negroes of the colonel's youth seemed to have
disappeared--flicked a horsefly now and then, with his whip, from the
horse's sweating back.

The first sign of the mill was a straggling group of small frame
houses, built of unpainted pine lumber. The barren soil, which would
not have supported a firm lawn, was dotted with scraggy bunches of
wiregrass. In the open doorways, through which the flies swarmed in
and out, grown men, some old, some still in the prime of life, were
lounging, pipe in mouth, while old women pottered about the yards, or
pushed back their s