During the late autumn one of the boys met with an accident which kept Mary from work for several days and drained her slender savings to the last nickle. Then winter came with its chill continuous rains, when the mills, always dull and somber, grew doubly gloomy. Doors and windows were kept closed and the prisoned air grew more and more poisonous as the workers exhaled it over and over. Mary protected her boys as well as possible. She had made herself so well-liked by her fellow-workers that no one interfered with her many little devices for the children’s comfort and no one manifested the ill-will which is so generally exhibited towards favorites; for it was impossible to be harsh toward the brave little woman who fought so desperately against losing odds. Toward spring Mis’ Lomux was obliged occasionally to take a day off on account of blinding headaches. “’Tain’t nothin’ at all,” she invariably protested, in answer to Polly’s anxious questions. “Folks that’s had the fever ginerally feel this way every year about the same time. When the weather gits warmer I’ll be stout as ever.” But Polly knew better. She had seen that look of deadly weariness too often to be deceived. “Ain’t you never heard from Tobe?” Polly asked one evening when she sat on the steps of Mary’s shack watching her friend’s strenuous attempts to hold herself erect while she patched a pair of faded little trousers. Mary bowed her head very low as she answered, “No.” “Where’s he at?” “In Atlanta, workin’ in the engine shops, an’ doin’ well; his maw told Billy Sanders a while back.” “An’ he knows you’re down here slavin’ like a nigger for all them chillun?” “I reckon he does, ’cause his maw writes to him.” “Then all I’ve got to say is that he must be a turrible no-count feller to let his wife—” “’Tain’t his fault,” Mary flung back, lifting her deathly pale face for a moment. “It’s them Lomuxes that made all the trouble to start with. If his maw hadn’t found fault with the chillun he never would a’ done what he did.” “If you knowed that, what made you send him off?” Polly wanted to know. “I jest couldn’t stand the thought of Tom bein’ teched by nobody. None of them chillun ever had a hand laid onto ’em afore, an’ I couldn’t bear that they should—ever!” “Well, ’tain’t none of my business, of course,” said Polly drily, “but I _will_ say that if Tobe was half a man even, he’d do his part now that you need him so bad.” “He couldn’t—not after what I said,” Mary protested mournfully. “I told him never to come back no more till Kingdom-come, an’ he said he wouldn’t—not if I begged him on my dyin’ bed!” “My land, what a mean sperited feller he must be!” Polly exclaimed contemptuously. “I wonder the Lord didn’t punish him for sech talk. In my opinion, Mary, you’re a heap better off without him than you’d be with him.”