o' th' Master's people down there,
out o' sight, that's so low they never heard His name: preachers don't
go there. But He'll see to't. He'll not min' their cursin' o' Him,
seein' they don't know His face, 'n' thinkin' He belongs to th' gentry.
I knew it wud come right wi' me, when times was th' most bad. I knew"--

The girl was trembling now with excitement, her hands working together,
her eyes set, all the slow years of ruin that had eaten into her brain
rising before her, all the tainted blood in her veins of centuries of
slavery and heathenism struggling to drag her down. But above all, the
Hope rose clear, simple: the trust in the Master: and shone in her
scarred face,--through her marred senses.

"I knew it wud come right, allus. I was alone then: mother was dead, and
father was gone, 'n' th' Lord thought 't was time to see to me,--special
as th' overseer was gettin' me an enter to th' poorhouse. So He sent Mr.
Holmes along. Then it come right!"

Margaret did not speak. Even this mill-girl could talk of him, pray for
him; but she never must take his name on her lips!

"He got th' cart fur me, 'n' this blessed old donkey, 'n' my room. Did
yoh ever see my room, Miss Marg'et?"

Her face lighted suddenly with its peculiar childlike smile.

"No? Yoh'll come some day, surely? It's a pore place, yoh'll think; but
it's got th' air,--th' air."

She stopped to breathe the cold morning wind, as if she thought to find
in its fierce freshness the life and brains she had lost.

"Ther' 's places in them alleys 'n' dark holes, Miss Marg'et, like th'
openin's to hell, with th' thick smells 'n' th' sights yoh'd see."

She went back with a terrible clinging pity to the Gehenna from which
she had escaped. The ill of life was real enough to her,--a hungry devil
down in those alleys and dens. Margaret listened, waking to the sense
of a different pain in the world from her own,--lower deeps from which
women like herself draw delicately back, lifting their gauzy dresses.

"Openin's to hell, they're like. People as come down to preach in them
think that, 'pears to me,--'n' think we've but a little way to go, bein'
born so near. It's easy to tell they thinks it,--shows in their looks.
Miss Marg'et!"

Her face flashed.

"Well, Lois?"

"Th' Master has His people 'mong them very lowest, that's not for such
as yoh to speak to. He knows 'em: men 'n' women starved 'n' drunk into
jails 'n' work-houses, that'd scorn to be cowardly