The sun had dipped behind the hills, and the quick chill of an August evening was in the air. Margaret shivered and reached for her coat. The road wound in and out through a scrubby growth of trees, then turned sharply and skirted the base of a steep hill. Beyond the next turn it dropped in a gentle descent and ran between wide open fields. A house appeared, then another and another. A man and a woman walked along the edge of the road and stopped while the automobile passed. The houses grew more frequent, and children and small dogs scurried across the road to a point of safety. "By George, I believe we've got the wrong road now," muttered Brandon with a frown. "Shall we go back?" "No, no," demurred the girl. "What does it matter? It's only another way around, and perhaps no longer than the other." The road turned and dropped again. The hill was steeper now. The air grew heavy and fanned Margaret's cheek with a warm breath as if from an oven. Unconsciously she loosened the coat at her throat. "Why, how warm it is!" she exclaimed. "Yes. I fancy there's no doubt now where we are," frowned Brandon. "I thought as much," he finished as the car swung around a curve. Straight ahead the road ran between lines of squat brown houses with men, women, and children swarming on the door-steps or hanging on the fences. Beyond rose tier upon tier of red and brown roofs flanked on the left by the towering chimneys of the mills. Still farther beyond and a little to the right, just where the sky was reddest, rose the terraced slopes of Prospect Hill crowned by the towers and turrets of Hilcrest. "We can at least see where we want to be," laughed Brandon. "Fine old place--shows up great against that sky; doesn't it?" The girl at his side did not answer. Her eyes had widened a little, and her cheeks had lost their bright color. She was not looking at the pile of brick and stone on top of Prospect Hill, but at the ragged little urchins and pallid women that fell back from the roadway before the car. The boys yelled derisively, and a baby cried. Margaret shrank back in her seat, and Brandon, turning quickly, saw the look on her face. His own jaw set into determined lines. "We'll be out of this soon, Miss Kendall," he assured her. "You mustn't mind them. As if it wasn't bad enough to come here anyway but that I must needs come now just when the day-shift is getting home!" "The day-shift?" "Yes; the hands who work days, you know." "But don't they all work--days?" Brandon laughed. "Hardly!" "You mean, they work _nights_?" "Yes." He threw a quizzical smile into her startled eyes. "By the way," he observed, "you'd better not ask Frank in that tone of voice if they work nights. That night-shift is a special pet of his. He says it's one great secret of the mills' prosperity--having two shifts. Not that his are the only mills that run nights, of course--there are plenty more."