Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/51

Rh would mutter when the great buzz saws drowned the splash and whirr of his old mill.

On the mill side of the river the country remained as of old. Alders and rushes bordered the stream and the corn lands met them in an irregular, friendly line. The arched stone bridge that spanned the river immediately above the mill-dam was as old as the mill and it too seemed to have been intended by Nature to be there, so perfectly did it harmonize with its surroundings.

On the other side of the river the hub factory shrieked its down-to-dateness with shrill whistles. It flaunted its efficiency in every line of its red brick ugliness. Nature would none of it. No alders grew on the factory side of the river and a barren stretch of land divided the factory site from the pleasant farm lands beyond. On that side was a country store which had tried to keep up with the factory in modern methods but, being after all a country store, had lapsed into its original state long ago.

The factory hands, white and colored, lived in cottages and cabins dotted through the county. Major Taylor paid good wages and had no trouble in getting labor. In busy seasons a hundred men were employed in the hub factory; two men and a boy in the mill. The Taylors' farm