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 kindlings into the cold stove, he cheered himself by singing, to the accompaniment of chattering teeth, a little song that he had heard somewhere and into which he had fitted his own name:

"Naow, Judy," he would exhort her when the fire was going strong, "it's nice an' warm an' no chore at all to git up." And he would throw a coat on the floor by the stove, so that she could stand on it to dress.

When they arrived at the stripping room Jerry lighted a fire, while Judith arranged a bed of coats for the baby. When the heat of the box stove began to make the room heavy, Billy too would begin to nod and Judith would lay him beside the baby to finish his sleep. Then the long day began.

Hat and Luke shared the stripping room with them. Things were easier for Hat because she had no children to bother with. Judith half envied her. Compared with her she felt in a manner degraded and in bondage.

In the stripping room there was even less conversation than there had been two years before. For now even Judith felt no desire to talk. Instead she was the most preoccupied and indifferent of them all. When she met Luke's little pig eyes fastened upon her she felt no stir of excitement of any kind, neither interest, nor aversion, not even disgust. Always tired and always sleepy, her body and mind alike numbed into a dull torpor, she saw nothing and thought of nothing but the browns and reds and yellows of the silken tobacco leaves. On account of her unusual sense of color and texture she had become the best tobacco stripper of them all. She could make seven grades where Luke and Jerry could make only three and four. Hat, who up to now had considered herself the queen of tobacco strippers, could make five. They stood upon gunny sacks or bits of board to keep their feet from the damp