tarin' down at me, 'n' th' shadders o' th' looms was like snakes
creepin',--creepin' anear all th' time. They was very good to me, th'
hands was,--very good. Ther' 's lots o' th' Master's people down
there, though 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's hands were 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' poor-house.
So He sent Mr. Holmes along. Then it come right!"

Margret 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. Margret listened, waked
reluctantly 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.

"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 or mean,--that
shows God's kindness, through th' whiskey 'n' thie