I shook my head. ``Oh, no; he isn't
that bad.''

``I don't know,'' said Marston.


The smoke of the young engineer's coke
ovens lay far below us and the Blight had
never seen a coke-plant before. It looked
like Hades even in the early dusk--the
snake-like coil of fiery ovens stretching up
the long, deep ravine, and the smoke-
streaked clouds of fire, trailing like a
yellow mist over them, with a fierce white
blast shooting up here and there when the
lid of an oven was raised, as though to add
fresh temperature to some particular male-
factor in some particular chamber of torment.
Humanity about was joyous, however.
Laughter and banter and song came
from the cabins that lined the big ravine
and the little ravines opening into it. A
banjo tinkled at the entrance of ``Possum
Trot,'' sacred to the darkies. We moved
toward it. On the stoop sat an ecstatic
picker and in the dust shuffled three
pickaninnies--one boy and two girls--the
youngest not five years old. The crowd
that was gathered about them gave way