or the rest
of the forenoon. The fun, for most of them, consisted of an extra
demand on their physical force--rough horse-play, leap-frog and
wrestling. One man went to town for extra stimulants. Another, a big
Swede, stripped nude, drained at a single draught a bottle of whiskey
and lay down to sleep himself drunk and sober again before his next
call to the pits. At the close of the day he lay there--a big, shaggy
animal, wallowing.

The mines were shut down on Sunday and we had an opportunity to look
around. Though a place of one thousand inhabitants, it has no
post-office. There are ditches but no drains; wide, deep gullies, but
no streets. The moon shines there in her season, but there are no
street lamps. The hogs are somewhat tame and we fed them as we went
along. There is a church but it's for black folks--it's essential to
them. The whites fare not so well. If they want one, they travel for
it. They do likewise for a school, for the little school beside the
church is for coloured children. The only "modern convenience" was an
ancient style of hydrant, around which the children were organizing
fire companies and extinguishing imaginary fires.

After visiting the mule boy in Rat Hollow on Sunday, I returned to the
camp. The men were lounging around the stove, smoking, and exchanging
experiences. In one corner, a German sailor was playing his wheezy
accordion, and in another, to a group of Slavs, a Russian soldier was
singing a love song. It was my last day with the muckers. Many of my
gang had already gone--the rest would follow. It wasn't a matter of
wages or hours--it was a question of muck. Once in it, men lived,
moved, and had their being in it, but even the most brutalized quailed
at the junk pile in the corner of the shed.

The sun was setting behind the red hills. Save for a long, yellow
streak just above the horizon, the sky was a mass of purple billows.
The yellow changed to amber and later to a blood red. Then rays of
sun-fire shot up and splashed the purple billows; the purple and gold
later gave place to black clouds through which the stars came one by
one, while the muckers were settling down for the night.

It seemed at first as if I would have to commit some crime to get
admission to the stockade where the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company
had their largest convict labour force. I was seedy-looking--my beard
had grown and I was still in blue shirt and overalls. I approached the
chaplain--told him