"I know his kind!" he said, with a sneer; "and they're no good to
your kind, Mary Denison, nor to mine. Mark my words, you'll hear no
more of that breastpin."

Mary turned away so decidedly that he said no more, but his eyes
followed her with a sinister look.

Next moment he was greeting Lena Laxen cordially, and she was
dimpling and smiling all over at his compliments. Lena thought
Mr. Hitchcock "just elegant!" and believed that Mary was jealous when
she said she did not like him. Something now prompted her to tell
him about the silk waist in the forbidden sack; he took her view at
once and zealously. The boss (for he did not use the kindly title of
"Old Man," by which the other mill-hands designated Mr. Gordon,
though he was barely forty) had his eye on the things, most likely,
as he had on the pin Mary Denison found. Hadn't Lena heard about that?
Well, it was a burning shame, he could tell her; he would see that
she, Lena, wasn't fooled that way. And Lena, listening eagerly,
heard a story very different from that which had been told to
Mr. Gordon.

In an hour the whole mill knew that Mary Denison had found a diamond
pin in the rags, and that Mr. Gordon had told her it was nothing but
hard glue, and had sold it himself in Boston for a thousand dollars,
and spent the money on a new horse.

Nor was this all! Late that evening Lena Laxen stole from her home
with a shawl over her head, and met the clerk by the corner of the
outer shed. A few minutes of whispering and giggling, and she stole