She sat watching the door keenly as they came out. What creatures they were, lint-and-dust-covered to their very eyes. The yellow, hard, emotionless faces of the men, the haggard, weary ones of the girls and women and little children! Never had she seen such white people before, such hollow eyes, with dark, bloodless rings beneath them, sunken cheeks, tanned to the color of oiled hickory, much used. Dazed, listless, they stumbled out past her with relaxed under-jaws and faces gloomy, expressionless--so long bent over looms, they had taken on the very looks of them--the shapes of them, moving, walking, working, mechanically. Women, smileless, and so tired and numbed that they had forgotten the strongest instinct of humanity--the romance of sex; for many of them wore the dirty, chopped-off jackets of men, their slouched black hats, their coarse shoes, and talked even in the vulgar, hard irony of the male in despair. They all passed out--one by one--for in them was not even the instinct of the companionship of misery. Every moment the old nurse expected Helen to walk out, to walk out in her queenly way, with her beautiful face and manners, so different from those around her. Jud Carpenter sat at his desk quietly cutting plug tobacco to fill his pipe-bowl, and watching the old woman slyly. "Oh, she'll be 'long 'torectly--you see the drawer-in bein' in the far room comes out last." The last one passed out. The mill became silent, and yet Helen did not appear. The old nurse arose impatiently: "I reck'n I'll go find her," she said to Carpenter. "I'd better sho' you the way, old 'oman," he said, lazily shuffling off the stool he was sitting on pretending to be reading a paper--"you'll never fin' the room by yo'self." He led her along through the main room, hot, lint-filled and evil-smelling. It was quite dark. Then to the rear, where the mill jutted on the side of a hill, he stopped in front of a door and said: "This is her room; she's in there, I reckin--she's gen'ly late." With quickening heart the old woman entered and, almost immediately, she heard the door behind her shut and the key turn in the bolt. The room was empty and she sprang back to the door, only to find it securely locked, and to hear Jud Carpenter's jeers from without. She ran to the two small windows. They were high and looked out over a ravine. She did not utter a word. Reared as she had been among the Conways, she was too well bred to act the coward, and beg and plead in undignified tones for relief. At first she thought it was only a cruel joke of the Whipper-in, but when he spoke, she saw it was not. "Got you where I want you, Mother of Zion," he said through the key hole. "I guess you are safe there till mornin' unless the Angel of the Lord opens the do' as they say he has a way of doin' for Saints--ha--ha--ha!" No word from within.