the floor."

Pap had drawn nearer on shaking limbs; the children crowded so close
that Johnnie looked up and motioned them back.

"Shade--you run for a doctor, and have a carriage fetched," she ordered
briefly.

"Is--Lord God, is she dead?" faltered the old man.

"Ef she ain't dead now, she'll die," Mandy answered him shrilly. "They
ain't no flesh on her--she's run down to a pore little skeleton. That's
what the factories does to women and children--they jest eats 'em up,
and spits out they' bones."

"Well, I never aimed to skeer her that-a-way," said Himes; "but the
little fool--"

Johnnie's flaming glance silenced him, and his voice died away, a sort
of a rasp in his throat. Mechanically he glanced up to the point on the
great belt from which the child had fallen, and measured the distance to
the floor. He scratched his bald head dubiously, and edged back from the
tragedy he had made.

"Everybody knows I never hit her," he muttered as he went.

CHAPTER XVIII

LIGHT

Gray Stoddard's eyes had followed Lydia Sessions when she went into the
hall to speak to Shade Buckheath. He had a glimpse of Johnnie, too, in
the passage; he noted that she later left the house with Buckheath
(Mandy Meacham was beyond his range of vision); and the pang that went
through him at the sight was a strangely mingled one.

The talk between him and his hostess had been enlightening to both of
them. It showed Lydia Sessions not only where she stood with Gray, but
it brought home to her startlingly, and as nothing had yet done, the
strength of Johnnie's hold upon him; while it forced Gray himself to
realize that ever since that morning when he met the girl on the bridge
going to put her little brothers and sisters in the Victory mill, he had
behaved more like a sulky, disappointed lover than a staunch friend. He
confessed frankly to himself, that, had Johnnie been a boy, a young man,
instead of a beautiful and appealing woman, he would have been prompt to
go to her and remonstrate--he would have made no bones of having the
matter out clearly and fully. He blamed himself much for the
estrangement which he had allowed to grow between them. He knew
instinctively about what Shade Buckheath was--certainly no fit mate for
Johnnie Consadine. And for the better to desert her--poor, helpless,
unschooled girl--could only operate to push her toward the worse. These
thoughts kept Stoddard wakeful company till almost morning.

Dawn came wit