. Our folks down
here are mighty short-sighted, judge. We'll wake them up. We'll build
a model cotton mill, and run it with decent hours and decent wages,
and treat the operatives like human beings with bodies to nourish,
minds to develop; and souls to save. Fetters and his crowd will have
to come up to our standard, or else we'll take their hands away."

Judge Bullard had looked surprised when the colonel began his
denunciation; and though he said little, his expression, when the
colonel had finished, was very thoughtful and not altogether happy.

_Fourteen_

It was the week after the colonel's house warming.

Graciella was not happy. She was sitting, erect and graceful, as she
always sat, on the top step of the piazza. Ben Dudley occupied the
other end of the step. His model stood neglected beside him, and he
was looking straight at Graciella, whose eyes, avoiding his, were bent
upon a copy of "Jane Eyre," held open in her hand. There was an
unwonted silence between them, which Ben was the first to break.

"Will you go for a walk with me?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, Ben," she replied, "but I have an engagement to go driving
with Colonel French."

Ben's dark cheek grew darker, and he damned Colonel French softly
beneath his breath. He could not ask Graciella to drive, for their old
buggy was not fit to be seen, and he had no money to hire a better
one. The only reason why he ever had wanted money was because of her.
If she must have money, or the things that money alone would buy, he
must get money, or lose her. As long as he had no rival there was
hope. But could he expect to hold his own against a millionaire, who
had the garments and the manners of the great outside world?

"I suppose the colonel's here every night, as well as every day," he
said, "and that you talk to him all the time."

"No, Ben, he isn't here every night, nor every day. His old darky,
Peter, brings Phil over every day; but when the colonel comes he talks
to grandmother and Aunt Laura, as well as to me."

Graciella had risen from the step, and was now enthroned in a
splint-bottomed armchair, an attitude more in keeping with the air of
dignity which she felt constrained to assume as a cloak for an uneasy
conscience.

Graciella was not happy. She had reached the parting of the ways, and
realised that she must choose between them. And yet she hesitated.
Every consideration of prudence dictated that she choose Colonel
French rather t