They were deft with their fingers--the old mill had taught many of them that--and their pay, daily, ran from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a half--as much as some of them had earned in a week of the old way. And, oh, the health of it, the glory of air and sky and sunshine, the smell of dew on the bruised cotton-heads, the rustle of the mountain breeze cooling the heated cheeks; the healthy hunger, and the lunches in the shade by the cool spring; the shadows of evening creeping down from the mountains, the healthy fatigue--and the sweet home-going in the twilight, riding beneath the silent stars on wagons of snowy seed cotton, burrowing in bed of down and purest white--this snow of a Southern summer--with the happy laughter of childhood and the hunger of home-coming, and the glory and freedom of it all! THE END. End of Project Gutenberg's The Bishop of Cottontown, by John Trotwood Moore