dust-filled atmosphere was vibrant with the dull, droning voice of the
Mill. From the forest of tall stacks the smoke went up in slow,
twisting columns to stain the clean blue sky with a heavy cloud of
dirty brown.

The deep-toned whistle of the Mill had barely called the workmen from
their dinner pails and baskets when two children came along the road
that for some distance follows close to the base of that high wall of
cliffs. By their ragged, nondescript clothing which, to say the least,
was scant enough to afford them comfort and freedom of limb, and by the
dirt, that covered them from the crowns of their bare, unkempt heads to
the bottoms of their bare, unwashed feet, it was easy to identify the
children as belonging to that untidy community.

One was a sturdy boy of eight or nine neglected years. On his rather
heavy, freckled face and in his sharp blue eyes there was, already, a
look of hardness that is not good to see in the countenance of a child.
The other, his sister, was two years younger--a thin wisp of a girl,
with tiny stooping shoulders, as though, even in her babyhood, she had
found a burden too heavy. With her tired little face and grave,
questioning eyes she looked at the world as if she were wondering,
wistfully, why it should bother to be so unkind to such a helpless mite
of humanity.

As they came down the worn road, side by side they chose with
experienced care those wheel ruts where the black dust lay thickest
and, in solemn earnestness, plowed the hot tracks with their bare feet,
as if their one mission in life were to add the largest possible cloud
of powdered dirt to the already murky atmosphere of the vicinity.