r restless, eager
blue eyes glancing at the clock, or "What a lot of ashes they do be
haulin' to-day!" Nothing else was to be seen from her window.

When the whistle blew she took down the dinner-pail, filled it with
potatoes and the piece of pork hot from the boiling pot, poured the coffee
in the tin cup, put on the cover, and, limping to the edge of the
retaining-wall, lowered it over by a string to her father. Sanders looked
up and waved his hand, and the girl went back to her post at the window.

When the night came he would light the kerosene lamp in their one room and
read aloud the stories from the Sunday papers, she listening eagerly and
asking him questions he could not answer, her eyes filling with tears or
her face breaking into smiles. This summed up her life.

Not much in the world, all this, for Sanders!--not much of rest, or
comfort, or happy sunshine,--not much of song or laughter, the pipe of
birds or smell of sweet blossoms,--not much room for gratitude or courage
or human kindness or charity. Only the ceaseless engine-bell, the grime,
the sulphurous hellish smoke, the driving rain, the ice and dust,--only
the endless monotony of ill-smelling, steaming carts, the smoke-stained
signal-flag and greasy lantern,--only the tottering shanty with the two
beds, the stove, and the few chairs and table,--only the blue-eyed
crippled girl who wound her thin arms about his neck.

It was on Sundays in the summer that the dreary monotony ceased. Then
Sanders would carry her to the edge of the woods, a mile or more back of
the cut. There was a little hollow carpeted with violets, and a pond,
where now and then a water-lily escaped the factory boys, and there were
big trees and bushes and stretches of grass, ending in open lots squared
all over by the sod gatherers.

On these days Sanders would lie on his back and watch the treetops swaying
in the sunlight against the sky, and the girl would sit by him and make
mounds of fresh mosses and pebbles, and tie the wild flowers into bunches.
Sometimes he would pretend that there were fish in the pond, and would cut
a pole and bend a pin, tie on a bit of string, and sit for hours watching
the cork, she laughing beside him in expectation. Sometimes they would
both go to sleep, his arm across her. And so the summer passed.

One day in the autumn, at twelve-o'clock whistle, a crowd of young
ruffians from the bolt-works near the brewery swept down the crossing
chasing a homel