Their
father tuck after his stepmother," he would explain regretfully, "an'
wucked hisself to death in the cotton factory. The dust an' lint give
him consumption. He was the only man I ever seed that tuck after his
stepmother"--he added sadly.

An old soldier never gets over the war. It has left a nervous shock
in his make-up--a memory in all his after life which takes precedence
over all other things. The old man had the naming of the
grandchildren, and he named them after the battles of the Civil war.
Bull Run and Seven Days were the boys. Atlanta, Appomattox and Shiloh
were the girls. His apology for Shiloh was: "You see I thout I'd name
the last one Appomattox. Then came a little one befo' her mammy died,
so weak an' pitiful I named her Shiloh."

It was the boast of their grandmother--that these children--even
little Shiloh--aged seven--worked from ten to twelve hours every day
in the cotton factory, rising before day and working often into the
night, with forty minutes at noon for lunch.

They had not had a holiday since Christmas, and on the last
anniversary of that day they had worked until ten o'clock, making up
for lost time. Their pay was twenty-five cents a day--except Shiloh,
who received fifteen.

"But I'll soon be worth mo', pap," she would say as she crawled up
into the old man's lap--her usual place when she had eaten her supper
and wanted to rest. "An you know what I'm gwine do with my other
nickel every day? I'm gwine give it to the po' people of Indy an'
China you preaches about."

And thus she would prattle--too young to know that, through the
cupidity of white men, in this--the land of freedom and
progress--she--this blue-eyed, white-skinned child of the Saxon race,
was making the same wages as the Indian sepoy and the Chinese coolie.

It was Saturday night and after the old man had put Shiloh to bed, he
mounted his horse and rode across the mountain to Westmoreland.

"Oh," said the old lady--"he's gwine over to Miss Alice's to git his
Sunday School less'n. An' I'd like to know what good Sunday school
less'ns 'll do any body. If folks'd git in the habit of wuckin' mo'
an' prayin' less, the worl'ud be better off, an' they'd really have
somethin' to be thankful fur when Sunday comes, 'stid of livin' frum
han' to mouth an' trustin' in some unknown God to cram feed in you'
crops."

Hardened by poverty, work, and misfortune, she was the soul of
pessimism.

CHAPTER VIII

WESTMORELAND