"Johnnie said--" began the little girl, desperately; but the old man,
stung to greater fury, sprang at her; she stumbled back and back; fell
against the slowly moving belt; her frock caught in the rivets which
were just passing, and she was instantly jerked from her feet. If any
one of the three men looking on had taken prompt action, the child might
have been rescued at once; but stupid terror held them motionless.
At the moment Johnnie, Shade and Mandy, coming up the stairs, got sight
of the group, Pap with upraised hammer, the child in the clutches of
imminent death.
With shrill outcries the other juvenile workers swiftly gathered in a
crowd. One broke away and fled down the long room screaming.
"You Pony Consadine! Milo! Come here. Pap Himes is a-killing yo'
sister."
The old man, shaking all through his bulk, stared with fallen jaw. Mandy
shrieked and leaped up the few remaining steps to reach Deanie, who was
already above the finger-tips of a tall man.
"Pap! Shade! Quick! Don't you see she'll be killed!" Mandy screamed in
frenzy.
Something in the atmosphere must have made itself felt, for no sound
could have penetrated the din of the weaving room; yet some of the women
left their looms and came running in behind the two pale, scared little
brothers, to add their shrieks to the general clamour. Deanie's fellow
workers, poor little souls, denied their childish share of the world's
excitements, gazed with a sort of awful relish.
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