t to sleep as he tried to climb into it.

In other parts of the mill, other little ones slept and even large girls
and boys, after eating, dozed or chatted. Spoolers, weavers, slubbers,
warpers, nearly grown but all hard-faced, listless--and many of them
slept on shawls and battings of cotton.

They were awakened by the big whistle at twenty minutes to one o'clock.
At the same time, Jud Carpenter, the foreman, passed down the aisles and
dashed cold water in the sleeping faces. Half laughingly he did it, but
the little ones arose instantly, and with stooped forms, and tired,
cowed eyes, in which the Anglo-Saxon spirit of resentment had been
killed by the Yankee spirit of greed, they looked at the foreman, and
then began their long six hours' battle with the bobbins.

Three o'clock! The warm afternoon's sun poured on the low flat tin roof
of the mill and warmed the interior to a temperature which was
uncomfortable.

Shiloh grew sleepy--she dragged her stumbling little feet along, and had
she stopped but a moment, she had paid the debt that childhood owes to
fairy-land. The air was close--stifling. Her shoulders ached--her head
seemed a stuffy thing of wood and wooly lint.

As it was she nodded as she walked, and again the song of the bluebird
peeped dreamily from out the unoiled spindle. She tried to sing to keep
awake, and then there came a strange phantasy to mix with it all, and
out of the half-awake world in which she now staggered along she caught
sight of something which made her open her eyes and laugh outright.

_Was it--could it be? In very truth it was--_

_Dolls!_

_And oh, so many! And all in a row dressed in matchless gowns of snowy
white. She would count them up to ten--as far as she had learned to
count.... But there were ten,--yes, and many more than ten-- ... and
just to think of whole rows of them-- ... all there-- ... and waiting
for her to reach out and fondle and caress._

_And she--never in her life before had she been so fortunate as to own
one...._

A smile lit up her dreaming eyes. _Rows upon rows of dolls.... And not
even Appomattox and Atlanta had ever seen so many before; and now how
funny they acted, dancing around and around and bobbing their quaint
bodies and winking and nodding at her.... It was Mayday with them and
down the long line of spindles these cotton dolls were dancing around
their May Queen, and beckoning Shiloh to join them...._

_It was too cute--too cunning--! they