"That was pitiful, wasn’t it?" said Masters. "By George, we don’t dream of what is going on in the hearts of men and women we meet face to face every day. And that’s what started her in the life she’s since led." "Yes, she lived in her house like a hermit, never going out unless she absolutely had to. She had an old-fashioned loom in a shed-room adjoining her house, and night and day people passing along the road could hear her thumping away on it. She kept a lot of fine sheep, feeding and shearing them herself, and out of the wool she wove a certain kind of jean cloth which she sold at a fancy figure. I’ve seen wagon-loads of it pass along the road billed to a big house in Atlanta. This went on for several years, and then it was noticed that she was accumulating money. She was buying all the land she could around her house, as if to force folks as far from her as possible, and she turned the soil to a good purpose, for she knew how to work it. She hired negroes for cash, when others were paying in old clothes and scraps, and, as she went to the field with them and worked in the sun and rain like a man, she got more out of her planting than the average farmer." "So she’s really well off?" said the drummer. "Got more than almost anybody else in the county," said Wilson. "She’s got stocks in all sorts of things, and owns houses on the main street in Darley, which she keeps well rented. It seems like, not having anything else to amuse her, she turned her big brain to economy and money-making, and I’ve always thought she did it to hit back at the community. You see, the more she makes, the more her less fortunate neighbors dislike her, and she loves to get even as far as possible." "And has she had no associates at all?" Masters wanted to know.