lifted the lint which had been settling in his lungs all morning.

"Looks sixteen at least," said the superintendent.

"Or sixty," snapped the inspector.

"He's always looked that way."

"How long?" asked the inspector, quickly.

"For years. Never gets a bit older."

"Or younger, I dare say. I suppose he's worked here all those years?"

"Off and on--but that was before the new law was passed," the
superintendent hastened to add.

"Machine idle?" the inspector asked, pointing at the unoccupied machine
beside Johnny's, in which the part-filled bobbins were flying like mad.

"Looks that way." The superintendent motioned the overseer to him and
shouted in his ear and pointed at the machine. "Machine's idle," he
reported back to the inspector.

They passed on, and Johnny returned to his work, relieved in that the ill
had been averted. But the one-legged boy was not so fortunate. The sharp-
eyed inspector haled him out at arms length from the bin truck. His lips
were quivering, and his face had all the expression of one upon whom was
fallen profound and irremediable disaster. The overseer looked astounded,
as though for the first time he had laid eyes on the boy, while the