Her eyes grew stupid, as if looking down into some dreary darkness.

“But the mill?”

The girl roused herself with a sharp sigh.

“In them years I got dazed in my head, I think.  ‘T was th’ air ‘n’ th’ work.  I was weak allus.  ‘T got so that th’ noise o’ th’ looms went on in my head night ‘n’ day,—­allus thud, thud.  ‘N’ hot days, when th’ hands was chaffin’ ‘n’ singin’, th’ black wheels ‘n’ rollers was alive, starin’ 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, out o’ sight, that’s so low 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 was trembling now with excitement, her hands 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’ poorhouse.  So He sent Mr. Holmes along.  Then it come right!”

Margaret 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.  Margaret listened, waking 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.

“Openin’s to hell, they’re like.  People as come down to preach in them think that, ‘pears to me,—­’n’ think we’ve but a little way to go, bein’ born so near.  It’s easy to tell they thinks it,—­shows in their looks.  Miss Marg’et!”

Her face flashed.