Away from the restraining hold of the small hands fluttered the slender cord. With a swiftness and directness that made the watchers gasp, the air-borne message sped on its way. Ten little faces peered expectantly heavenward. Ten childish mouths stood agape as hungrily as those of young birds. Ten pairs of eager, luminous eyes stared after the kite as it receded into the great, unknown spaces of the air. With bated breath Mollie herself watched until the kite became a tiny speck in the distance and finally disappeared from even her keen range of vision. "Kneel down," she commanded, softly, kneeling herself as she spoke. With one accord the children knelt. Somewhere the sun was shining. Its rays did not penetrate the gloom which surrounded that pitiful band of innocents with age-old faces and tattered clothes. Behind them spread a miserable little vegetable patch. Beyond, to the right, were the outlines of a ramshackle barn, decrepit out-buildings and a wretched apology for a house. Above loomed tall, gnarled trees, moody and sullen in appearance, their lowering branches frowning down upon the tousled heads now reverently bowed. Directly in front of the little group yawned a morass as sinister and menacing as hell itself, its quaking mud ready to suck into bottomless depths any dead or living creature within reach of its loathsome touch. The children clustered on its bank knew only too well the awful secrets consigned to those quaking depths. Even little Tommy, the youngest except Baby Amy asleep under a tree, clutched the hand of the child beside him and shivered as he stared, fascinated, upon the ugly black bog while Mollie voiced their prayer: "Oh, dear God, our first kite was lost. We've sent yo' another. I printed the words on hit big. Yo'll see hit a-comin'. We want help. We want to git away from hyar before Old Grimes puts any more of us in the bog. Oh, God, we're awful hungry. We're hungrier than the sparrows yo' dote on. But they'll git along fer a spell, God. Hit's our turn now. Let us be sparrows. These hyar children need help. That's why we're sendin' yo' the kite. Yo'll find us in the barn or in the veg'table patch. Ef yo' doan find us yo'll know we're daid. We caint git away. So please help us quick. Amen." A low, plaintive wail sounded as Mollie ceased speaking. She sprang to her feet and ran to the tree under which she had placed the least one of her brood. Little Amy was awake and moaning as only a very sick child can moan. Mollie gathered the tiny sufferer in her arms and did what she could to ease the little one's misery. She realized the uselessness of her efforts. For weeks she had watched Amy slowly wasting away for lack of nourishment. She had listened night and day to her piteous moans. Sometimes it seemed that her own heart would break under the strain of witnessing the grim tragedy about her.