next morning she complained bitterly:

"I tested ever' one o' them yaller coins las' night, they mout a put
a counterfeit in the lot, an' see heah, Hillard--" she grinned
showing her teeth--"I wore my teeth to the quick a testin' 'em!"

The next week, as the train took the Bishop away, he stood on the
rear platform to cry good-bye to Shiloh and Jack Bracken who were
down to see him off. By his side was a stooped figure and as the old
man jingled some gold in his pocket he said, patting the figure on
the back:

"You'll come back a man, Cap'n Tom--thank God! a man ag'in!"

PART FIFTH.--THE LOOM

CHAPTER I

A NEW MILL GIRL

The autumn had deepened--the cotton had been picked. The dry stalks,
sentinelling the seared ground, waved their tattered remnants of
unpicked bolls to and fro--summer's battle flags which had not yet
fallen.

Millwood was astir early that morning--what there was of it. One by
one the lean hounds had arisen from their beds of dry leaves under
the beeches, and, shaking themselves with that hound-shake which
began at their noses and ended in a circular twist of their skeleton
tails, had begun to hunt for stray eggs and garbage. Yet their master
was already up and astir.

He came out and took a long drink from the jug behind the door. He
drank from the jug's mouth, and the gurgling echo sounded down the
empty hall: _Guggle--guggle--gone! Guggle--guggle--gone!_ It said to
Edward Conway as plainly as if it had a voice.

"Yes, you've gone--that's the last of you. Everything is gone," he
said.

He sat down on his favorite chair, propped his feet upon the rotten
balcony's rim and began to smoke.

Within, he heard Lily sobbing. Helen was trying to comfort her.

Conway glanced into the room. The oldest sister was dressed in a
plain blue cotton gown--for to-day she would begin work at the mill.
Conway remembered it. He winced, but smoked on and said nothing.

"'Tain't no use--'tain't no use," sobbed the little one--"My mammy's
gone--gone!"

Such indeed was the fact. Mammy Maria had gone. All that any of them
knew was that only an hour before another black mammy had come to
serve them, and all she would say was that she had come to take Mammy
Maria's place--gone, and she knew not where.

Conway winced again and then swore under his breath. At first he had
not believed it, none of them had. But as the morning went on and
Mammy Maria failed to appear, he accepted it, saying: "Jus