unbonnets to stare vacantly at the advancing buggy.
Dirty babies were tumbling about the cabins. There was a lean and
listless yellow dog or two for every baby; and several slatternly
black women were washing clothes on the shady sides of the houses. A
general air of shiftlessness and squalor pervaded the settlement.
There was no sign of joyous childhood or of happy youth.

A turn in the road brought them to the mill, the distant hum of which
had already been audible. It was a two-story brick structure with many
windows, altogether of the cheapest construction, but situated on the
bank of a stream and backed by a noble water power.

They drew up before an open door at one corner of the building. The
colonel alighted, entered, and presented his letter of introduction.
The superintendent glanced at him keenly, but, after reading the
letter, greeted him with a show of cordiality, and called a young man
to conduct the visitor through the mill.

The guide seemed in somewhat of a hurry, and reticent of speech; nor
was the noise of the machinery conducive to conversation. Some of the
colonel's questions seemed unheard, and others were imperfectly
answered. Yet the conditions disclosed by even such an inspection
were, to the colonel, a revelation. Through air thick with flying
particles of cotton, pale, anaemic young women glanced at him
curiously, with lack-luster eyes, or eyes in which the gleam was not
that of health, or hope, or holiness. Wizened children, who had never
known the joys of childhood, worked side by side at long rows of
spools to which they must give unremitting attention. Most of the
women were using snuff, the odour of which was mingled with the flying
particles of cotton, while the floor was thickly covered with
unsightly brown splotches.

When they had completed the tour of the mills and returned to the
office, the colonel asked some questions of the manager about the
equipment, the output, and the market, which were very promptly and
courteously answered. To those concerning hours and wages the replies
were less definite, and the colonel went away impressed as much by
what he had not learned as by what he had seen.

While settling his bill at the livery stable, he made further
inquiries.

"Lord, yes," said the liveryman in answer to one of them, "I can tell
you all you want to know about that mill. Talk about nigger
slavery--the niggers never were worked like white women and children
are in them m