“Don’t you know that she’s killin’ herself at the cotton mills down at Gainesville, workin’ for them chillun? Ain’t nobody wrote an’ told you that, Tobe Lomux?” Tobe ignored the question. “Did Mary send you to me?” he asked in a voice that Polly misinterpreted. “No, she didn’t. She’s got too much grit for that even if she is too sick to hold up her head. I didn’t have much hopes of gittin’ any satisfaction from you, judgin’ by the way you’ve acted, but I thought I’d try jest onct. What I want to know, Tobe Lomux, is if you’re goin’ to let her die—or not?” “Me! Why, good Lord, what can I do? If Mary wanted me I’d—I’d—Well, she don’t, that’s all.” “Mary didn’t send for you,” Polly broke in eagerly, “but if you’re any sort of a man you’ll drop that spike an’ take the fust train to Gainesville. That’s what you’d do, if——” The tool dropped from Tobe’s grimy hand, and his head and shoulders went back defiantly. “I’m goin’ right back along with you,” he said, jerking off his leather apron and shaking down his sleeves. “Wait till I draw my pay. We can talk on the train.” Polly remembered that homeward ride to her dying day, for it was the first time in her defrauded life that she had been brought face to face with a great passion whose very crudeness added to its strength. Tobe had held himself with grim, fearful ardor to his labor, while his stubborn aching heart yearned for one word of reconciliation from Mary. His mother had written strange, slighting things relating to the blighting factory life that Tobe abhorred, and he had waited and Mary had suffered in silence. Before the train reached Gainesville Tobe’s busy brain had evolved a plan which he confided to Polly while they stood on the station platform waiting for the country stage which was to take Tobe up to Lumpkin that very afternoon. “I’ll be down by noon tomorrer, sure,” was his parting promise. Polly paid a brief visit to Mary’s shack when she reached Factory Row, fearing to stay long lest her secret should escape her eager lips. She was tired, she explained so tersely that the sick girl felt hurt and neglected. The following day Polly appeared at sunrise. “I don’t aim to work today,” she announced, “so I may as well set with you, Mary. You jest lemme fix you up on the porch where you can git the air while I red up the house a bit.” Mary was too listless to object, so she dragged herself out to the narrow porch where the warm spring sunshine drenched the rough boards with a golden flood, upon which the blossomed torches of the cypress vine made small, dancing shadows. “Ain’t it a turrible pretty day!” Polly exclaimed glowingly. “Makes me think of way up in Lumpkin, don’t it you?” “I jest can’t bear to think of it at all!” Mary wailed, with a yearning glance toward the far, golden hills. “I’ll bet the honeysuckles is jest thick all over them river hills by now. Don’t you rec’lect how blue the bottoms looked along about this time when the dog vi’lets is out full?”