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 sack to serve as an apron. The short ends of her coarse black hair hung in uncombed rattails about her face; and her great feet, planked firmly on the ground with the toes turned in, were bare and very dirty. Her clothes, her hair, and her perspiring face were powdered thickly with the down from the feathers which fell like snow about her and frosted the ground for yards around. Between her knees she gripped the goose's head and with her big, coarse hands plucked away great handfuls of the soft, white, fluffy down from the breast and under the wings and stuffed them into a stiff paper flour sack that stood open at her side. The goose struggled and squawked mightily. Hat only gripped the prisoner more firmly between her great knees and went about her task more vigorously.

As Judith came up she was greeted by a strong smell of pigsty. Luke had had a good corn crop and was fattening several hogs that fall. Three or four lean hounds that were slinking about the dooryard barked in a perfunctory, spasmodic way, then relapsed into silence. Hat stopped for a moment to try to brush away with her down-covered hand some of the fluff that clung irritatingly about her eyes.

"Land alive, Judy, I sholy do hate to pick geese," she gasped. "I git all het up, an' then the durn stuff sticks in the sweat, an' you wouldn't believe haow it itches me. But it's gotta be done, an' there hain't nobody else that'll do it. Feathers is a good price this year. An' when these feathers is turned into money, it's me that's a-goin' to handle it. Las' time we sold feathers, Luke he got holt o' the money an' that's the last I ever seen of it. An' it was me that raised 'em an' fed 'em an' picked 'em an' done every durn thing."

Hat's voice trembled with anger and self-pity. Judith opened her mouth to start to say something; but Hat did not wait to hear what it might be. She was seething with a sense of wrong and glad to have somebody in whom to confide.

"The men sholy do have it easy compared with us wimmin, Judy," she continued. "Here all this summer I worked like a dawg in the terbaccer a-settin' an' a-toppin' an' a-hoein' an' a-wormin' an' a-cuttin'; an' all the fore part o' the winter I'll