with an ease which showed great strength, and threw it into a pit that yawned at the side.  Souse went the sheep into a murky, muddy pool and disappeared.  But suddenly its head came up and then its shoulders.  And it began half to walk and half swim down what appeared to be a narrow boxlike ditch that contained other floundering sheep.  Then Carley saw men on each side of this ditch bending over with poles that had crooks at the end, and their work was to press and pull the sheep along to the end of the ditch, and drive them up a boarded incline into another corral where many other sheep huddled, now a dirty muddy color like the liquid into which they had been emersed.  Souse!  Splash!  In went sheep after sheep.  Occasionally one did not go under.  And then a man would press it under with the crook and quickly lift its head.  The work went on with precision and speed, in spite of the yells and trampling and baa-baas, and the incessant action that gave an effect of confusion.

Carley saw a pipe leading from a huge boiler to the ditch.  The dark fluid was running out of it.  From a rusty old engine with big smokestack poured the strangling smoke.  A man broke open a sack of yellow powder and dumped it into the ditch.  Then he poured an acid-like liquid after it.

“Sulphur and nicotine,” yelled Flo up at Carley.  “The dip’s poison.  If a sheep opens his mouth he’s usually a goner.  But sometimes they save one.”

Carley wanted to tear herself away from this disgusting spectacle.  But it held her by some fascination.  She saw Glenn and Hutter fall in line with the other men, and work like beavers.  These two pacemakers in the small pen kept the sheep coming so fast that every worker below had a task cut out for him.  Suddenly Flo squealed and pointed.

“There! that sheep didn’t come up,” she cried.  “Shore he opened his mouth.”

Then Carley saw Glenn energetically plunge his hooked pole in and out and around until he had located the submerged sheep.  He lifted its head above the dip.  The sheep showed no sign of life.  Down on his knees dropped Glenn, to reach the sheep with strong brown hands, and to haul it up on the ground, where it flopped inert.  Glenn pummeled it and pressed it, and worked on it much as Carley had seen a life-guard work over a half-drowned man.  But the sheep did not respond to Glenn’s active administrations.

“No use, Glenn,” yelled Hutter, hoarsely.  “That one’s a goner.”

Carley did not fail to note the state of Glenn’s hands and arms and overalls when he returned to the ditch work.  Then back and forth Carley’s gaze went from one end to the other of that scene.  And suddenly it was arrested and held by the huge fellow who handled the sheep so brutally.  Every time he dragged one and threw it into the pit he yelled:  “Ho!  Ho!” Carley was impelled to look at his face, and she was amazed to meet the rawest and boldest stare from evil eyes that had ever been