Mr. Carleton had given the desired promise, and now as he looked down upon the mills he was reminded of it. "I can get there by the time the workmen come out for dinner, and it will give me an unusual opportunity to see them all together," he murmured. "I will go, though it will make me late at home." And he hastened away in that direction. As he reached the main street of the village, he saw a half dozen boys from four to ten years of age at play. Pausing a moment, he asked the oldest: "Would you like to go to Sunday-school, my boy?" "What's that?" the lad inquired, curiously. "It is a school where you learn God's truth, and the story of his Son, Jesus Christ," Mr. Carleton explained. "Whose he?" the boy asked. "I never heard of him before. I guess he don't live in these parts, does he?" Laying his hand on the boy's head, the minister earnestly said: "It is God who made this world, and all there is in it; and he through his great love for us sent his only Son Jesus to die for our sins." "What are ye givin' us?" the boy answered, with the air of one who was being imposed upon. "If that was so, don't ye 'spose I'd 'ave heard it before?" Mr. Carleton walked slowly on toward the mill office, convinced that the Black Forge Mill field did indeed stand in need of immediate Christian work. He found that Mr. Bacon was not in; but a clerk told him that in five minutes more the noon whistle would blow, and from the office door he could see the mill hands file out through the gates. Scarcely had the first note of the whistle sounded on the air, when men, women, and half-grown children, as if glad for even a brief respite from their monotonous toil, hastened out from the different buildings, and, pressing in one vast throng through the ponderous gateway scattered among the tenement houses for dinner. What a motley crowd it was! The old and the young were there, the weak and the strong, the ragged and the neat, the coarse and the delicate, the grave and the gay. But upon every face there was written more or less of that stolid indifference which comes from pinching poverty, excessive toil, and reckless living. "Five hundred and sixty-two of them," remarked the clerk to Mr. Carleton; "and a harder set you never saw, men, women, or children. I won't except a single one. By the way," he added, as the minister started down the office steps, "you had better keep the middle of the street as you go up town, or some of those youngsters will be throwing eggs or stones at you. I saw Ray Branford, the biggest scamp among them all, and the greatest daredevil, too, have his eyes on you as he passed; you won't be the first minister he has insulted." With a laugh Mr. Carleton replied, "Oh, I fear no trouble," and hurried out of the gate. He had not gone a dozen rods when a stone thrown from some neighboring corner struck his hat, and sent it spinning to the ground, eight or ten feet away. "Hoorah! Hoorah! Bully for you, Ray!" shouted a chorus of voices.