p handle thumped heavily on the floor and the
jingling of a spur rattled over the hall floor, as Harry Travis
boisterously went down the hall, singing tipsily,

"Oh, Johnny, my dear,
Just think of your head,
Just think of your head
In the morning."

Another door banged so loudly it awakened even the setter. The old
dog came to the side of the bed and laid his head affectionately in
Travis' palm. The master of The Gaffs stroked his head, saying: "It
is strange that I love this old dog so."

CHAPTER IV

FOOD FOR THE FACTORY

The next morning being Saturday, Carpenter, the Whipper-in, mounted
his Texas pony and started out toward the foothills of the mountains.

Upon the pommel of his saddle lay a long single-barreled squirrel
gun, for the hills were full of squirrels, and Jud was fond of a
tender one, now and then. Behind him, as usual, trotted Bonaparte,
his sullen eyes looking for an opportunity to jump on any timid
country dog which happened along.

There are two things for which all mills must be prepared--the wear
and tear of Time on the machinery--the wear and tear of Death on the
frail things who yearly work out their lives before it.

In the fight for life between the machine and the human labor, in the
race of life for that which men call success, who cares for the life
of one little mill hand? And what is one tot of them from another?
And if one die one month and another the next, and another the next
and the next, year in and year out, who remembers it save some
poverty-hardened, stooped and benumbed creature, surrounded by a
scrawny brood calling ever for bread?

The world knows not--cares not--for its tiny life is but a thread in
the warp of the great Drawing-in Machine.

So fearful is the strain upon the nerve and brain and body of the
little things, that every year many of them pass away--slowly,
surely, quietly--so imperceptibly that the mill people themselves
scarcely miss them. And what does it matter? Are there not hundreds
of others, born of ignorance and poverty and pain, to take their
places?

And the dead ones--unknown, they simply pass into a Greater Unknown.
Their places are filled with fresh victims--innocents, whom Passion
begets with a caress and Cupidity buys with a curse. Children they
are--tots--and why should they know that they are trading--life for
death?

It was a bright fall morning, and Jud Carpenter rode toward the
mountain a few mil