as much or as little as the state pleases. What you
chaps call 'liberty' you'll find is something quite different, Baggs,
for it means good-bye to privacy in the home and independence outside
it."

"That's a false and wicked idea of progress, John Best, and well you
know it," answered Levi. "You're one of the sort content to work on a
chain and bring up your children likewise; but you can't stand between
the human race and freedom--no more can Daniel Ironsyde, or any other
man."

"Well, meantime, till the world's put right by your friends, you get on
with your hackling, my old bird, else you'll have the spreaders
grumbling," answered Mr. Best. Then he went into his home and Levi
trundled the wheelbarrow to a building with a tar-pitched, penthouse
roof, which stuck out from the side of the mill, like a fungus on a tree
stem.

Within, before a long, low window, stood the hand dresser's tools--two
upturned boards set with a mass of steel pins. The larger board had tall
teeth disposed openly; upon the smaller, the teeth were shorter and as
dense as a hair brush. In front of them opened a grating and above ran
an endless band. Behind this grille was an exhaust, which sucked away
the dust and countless atoms of vegetable matter scattered by Levi's
activities, and the running band from above worked it. For the
authorities, he despised, considered the operations of Mr. Baggs and
ordained that they should be conducted under healthy conditions.

He took his seat now before the rougher's hackle, turned up his shirt
sleeves over a pair of sinewy arms and powerful wrists and set to work.

From the mass of hemp tow he drew hanks and beat the pins with them
industriously, wrenched the mass through the steel teeth again and again
and separated the short fibre from the long. Presently in his hand
emerged a wisp of bright fibre, and now flogging the finer hackling
board, he extracted still more short stalks and rubbish till the
finished strick came clean and shining as a lock of woman's hair. From
the hanks of long tow he seemed to bring out the tresses like magic. In
his swift hand each strick flashed out from the rough hank with great
rapidity, and every crafty, final touch on the teeth made it brighter.
Giving a last flick or two over the small pins, Mr. Baggs set down his
strick and soon a pile of these shining locks grew beside him, while the
exhaust sucked away the rubbish and fragments, and the mass of short
fibre which he