he nodded toward the girl with the shining curls

"Mooney says he'll pay seven-fifty for her when he gets his tie-
money from the Government, an' he paid me fifty down," he said.
"It'll help pay for the brat's board these last ten years--an'
mebby, when it comes to a show-down, I can stick him for a
thousand."

The woman made no answer. She was, in a way, past answering with a
mind of her own. The man, as he stood there, was wicked and cruel,
every line in his ugly face and angular body a line of sin. The
woman was bent, broken, a wreck. In her face there was no sign of
a living soul. Her eyes were dull, her heart burned out, her hands
gnarled with toil under the slavedom of a beast. Yet even Peter,
quiet as a mouse where he lay, sensed the difference between them.
He had seen the girl and this woman sobbing in each other's arms.
And often he had crawled to the woman's feet, and occasionally her
hand had touched him, and frequently she had given him things to
eat. But it was seldom he heard her voice when the man was near.

The man was biting off a chunk of black tobacco. Suddenly he
asked,

"How old is she, Liz?"

And the woman answered in a strange and husky voice.

"Seventeen the twelfth day of this month."

The man spat.