dusty lint clinging to every splinter in its walls, a young man was
playing a banjo, and two others, with naked feet, were dancing as if
for their lives. A slim dark girl in a blue and white homespun dress,
her head turbaned with a square of the same, sat on a bag of seed cotton
watching them.

"Now, boys, a break-down," called out the player, "and then I must gin
out Religion's cotton; come, now, lively."

And they went lively enough.

"You bake the bread, and gimme the crus';
You sift the meal, and gimme the husk;
You bile the pot, and gimme the grease;
I have the crumbs, and you have the feast--
But mis' gwine gimme the ham-bone."

The loose boards shook and trembled under the heavy feet, the scattered
cotton seed whirled away in little eddies, and baskets of cotton
standing about tipped a little break-down of their own. Even the girl on
the bag, whose sober, earnest face seemed out of keeping with the
gayety, beat time with her bare feet. But by the time the miller threw
his banjo aside, its strings still quivering, she was standing up, and
the look of interest had given place to the old gravity. She had not a
pretty feature, not even the usual pretty teeth. She was a homely black
girl.

"See here, Religion," said the miller, "this here's Saturday evenin',
and I keeps holiday like everybody else but you; can't you git along
without that little tum of cotton? It ain't wuth ginnin'."

"I'm 'bliged to have it," she answered. "I didn't give nary day's work
for rent this week; will pay the week's rent and git sumpin beside. We
doesn't draw no ration."

"It's a mighty small heap o' ration you'll git out'n that tum of cotton
after you pay fifty cents for your week's rent. Don't you find it
cheaper to work out the week's rent than to pay it?"

"I git fifty cents a hundred for pickin'," she answered, simply, "and I
kin pick two hundred and fifty a day, and scrap twenty-five more. We
doesn't git but fifty cents fur a whole day's work on the plantation."

He looked at her admiringly, at the thin supple body and long light arms
that could reach so far among the cotton bolls. He untied the bags and
proceeded to fill the gin. A girl who could pick two hundred and
seventy-five pounds of cotton a day was a person of some consequence.

The gin stopped its whir, and the clerk weighed the cotton. Religion
watched him sharply, and counted the checks he handed her twice.

"If you pass 'em at the Hermit