on the
floor.

"I tell you, when I married," said Jud, "I seed nothin' but poverty
an' the multiplication of my part of the earth ahead of me--poverty,
I tell you, starvation an' every new chile addin' to it. But since
you started this mill, Mister Kingsley (Kingsley smiled and bowed
across the desk at him), I've turned what everybody said 'ud starve
us into ready cash. And now I say to the young folks: 'Marry an'
multiply an' the cash will be forthcomin'.'"

This was followed by loud laughs, especially from those who were
blessed with children, and they filed up to get their wages.

Jim Stallings, who had four in the mill, was counted out eleven
dollars. As he pocketed it he looked at Jud and said:

"Oh, no, Jud; it don't pay to raise chillun. I wish I had the chance
old Sollerman had. I'd soon make old Vanderbilt look like shin
plaster."

He joined in the laughter which followed.

In the doorway he cut a pigeon-wing in which his thin, bowed legs
looked comically humorous.

Jud Carpenter was a power in the mill, standing as he did so near to
the management. To the poor, ignorant ones around him he was the
mouth-piece of the mill, and they feared him even more than they did
Kingsley himself, Kingsley with his ironical ways and lilting
eye-glasses. With them Jud's nod alone was sufficient.

They were still grouped around the office awaiting their turn. In the
faces of some were shrewdness, cunning, hypocrisy. Some looked out
through dull eyes, humbled and brow-beaten and unfeeling. But all of
them when they spoke to Jud Carpenter--Jud Carpenter who stood in
with the managers of the mill--became at once the grinning, fawning
framework of a human being.

"Yes, boys," said Jud patronizingly as Stallings went out, "this here
mill is a god-send to us po' folks who've got chillun to burn. They
ain't a day we ortenter git down on our knees an' thank Mr. Kingsley
an' Mister Travis there. You know I done took down that sign I useter
have hangin' up in my house in the hall--that sign which said, _God
bless our home_? I've put up another one now."

"What you done put up now, Jud?" grinned a tall weaver with that
blank look of expectancy which settles over the face of the middle
man in a negro minstrel troupe when he passes the stale question to
the end man, knowing the joke which was coming.

"Why, I've put up," said Jud brutally, "'_Suffer Little Children to
Come Unto Me_.' That's scriptural authority for cotton mil