w that she wanted to--and she lay in her
grandfather's lap with flushed face and hot, over-worked heart. The
strain was beginning to tell, and the old man grew uneasy, as he
watched the flush on her cheeks and the unusual brightness in her
eyes.

"Better give her five draps of tub'bentine an' put her to bed," said
Mrs. Watts as she came by. "She'll be fittin' an' good by mornin'."

The old man did not reply--he only sang a low melody and smoothed her
forehead.

It was ten o'clock, and now she lay on the old man's lap asleep from
exhaustion. A cricket began chirping in the fireplace, under a
hearth-brick.

"What's that, Pap?" asked Shiloh half asleep.

"That's a cricket, Pet," smiled the old man.

She listened a while with a half-amused smile on her lips:

"Well, don't you think his spindles need oilin', Pap?"

There was little but machinery in her life.

Another hour found the old man tired, but still holding the sleeping
child in his arms:

"If I move her she'll wake," he said to himself. "Po' little Shiloh."

He was silent a while and thoughtful. Then he looked up at the shadow
of Sand Mountain, falling half way down the valley in the moonlight.

"The shadow of that mountain across that valley," he said, "is like
the shadow of the greed of gain across the world. An' why should it
be? What is it worth? Who is happier for any money more than he needs
in life?"

He bowed his head over the sleeping Shiloh.

"Oh, God," he prayed--"You, who made the world an' said it might
have a childhood--remember what it means to have it filched away.
It's like stealin' the bud from the rose-bush, the dew from the
grass, hope from the heart of man. Take our manhood--O God--it is
strong enough to stand it--an' it has been took from many a strong
man who has died with a smile on his lips. Take our old age--O
God--for it's jus' a memory of Has Beens. But let them not steal that
from any life that makes all the res' of it beautiful with dreams of
it. If, by some inscrutable law which we po' things can't see
through, stealin' in traffic an' trade must go on in the world, O
God, let them steal our purses, but not our childhood. Amen."

CHAPTER XIV

UNCLE DAVE'S WILL

The whistle of the mill had scarcely awakened Cottontown the next
morning before Archie B., hatless and full of excitement, came over
to the Bishop with a message from his mother. No one was astir but
Mrs. Watts, and she was sweeping vigorously.

"