s. The old man watched her, irritated. She had been used to the
keen scrutiny of his eyes since she was a baby, so was cool under it
always. The face watching her was one that repelled most men: dominant,
restless, flushing into red gusts of passion, a small, intolerant eye,
half hidden in folds of yellow fat,--the eye of a man who would give to
his master (whether God or Satan) the last drop of his own blood, and
exact the same of other men.

She had tied her bonnet and fastened her shawl, and stood ready to go.

"Is that all you want?" he demanded. "Are you waiting to hear that your
work is well done? Women go through life as babies learn to walk,--a
mouthful of pap every step, only they take it in praise or love. Pap is
better. Which do you want? Praise, I fancy."

"Neither," she said, quietly brushing her shawl. "The work is well done,
I know."

The old man's eye glittered for an instant, satisfied; then he turned
to the books. He thought she had gone, but, hearing a slight clicking
sound, turned round. She was taking the chicken out of the cage.

"Let it alone!" he broke out, sharply. "Where are you going with it?"

"Home," she said, with a queer, quizzical face. "Let it smell the green
fields, Doctor. Ledgers and copperas are not good food for a chicken's
soul, or body either."

"Let it alone!" he growled. "You take it for a type of yourself, eh? It
has another work to do than to grow fat and sleep about the barnyard."

She opened the cage.

"I think I will take it."

"No," he said, quietly. "It has a master here. Not P. Teagarden. Why,
Margaret," pushing his stubby finger between the tin bars, "do you think
the God you believe in would have sent it here without a work to do?"

She looked up; there was a curious tremor in his flabby face, a shadow
in his rough voice.

"If it dies here, its life won't have been lost. Nothing is lost. Let it
alone."

"Not lost?" she said, slowly, refastening the cage. "Only I think"----

"What, child?"

She glanced furtively at him.

"It's a hard, scraping world where such a thing as that has work to do!"

He vouchsafed no answer. She waited to see his lip curl bitterly, and
then, amused, went down the stairs. She had paid him for his sneer.

The steps were but a long ladder set in the wall, not the great
staircase used by the hands: that was on the other side of the factory.
It was a huge, unwieldy building, such as crowd the suburbs of trading
towns. This one