Willie stepped to the edge of the elevator shaft and called through the opening.

"Abner! Hey, Abner!"

But before Abner could answer, Willie stumbled and fell through the open shaft.

He died the next day.

A few years after the boy's death, night watchmen at the mill began telling of a strange woman, dressed all in black, whom they sometimes met on their rounds.

"She looks sad," they all agreed, "and she walks along slowly through the mill, looking around like she's hunting somebody special.

"Don't laugh-I seen her as plain as I see you. It gives you the shivers. First time I saw her, I thought to quit my job, but she seemed harmless enough.

"She's been back three or four times. Always gives me a shock to step off the elevator or come up the stairs and see her walking straight and quiet along the rows of machines.

"But she don't bother me, and I don't bother her."

The stories of the watchmen's encounters with the woman in black varied only slightly, and, although many friends scoffed at their reports and suggested the men were looney from being alone too many nights in the sprawling building, they all steadfastly declared they had definitely seen the black-clad visitor.

In the late 1920's the mill began operating a night shift. Most of the operators on that shift had never heard the tales of the visits by the woman in black, so they were completely unprepared when she appeared that summer night. Workers on the third floor, in the spinning room, saw her first. No one witnessed her arrival-she was just suddenly there. She seemed unaware of the presence of the men for she ignored them completely, even when one or two of them approached her to ask politely if they could help her.

"There was a rush of cold air when I got close to her," one of the men reported later. "It wasn't like anything I ever felt before."

Some of the workers left their machines and followed her-keeping back a respectful distance-down to the card room on the next floor.

Here, as she had done in the spinning room, she walked between the rows of machinery, looking at the people but speaking to no one. The routine was repeated on the first floor in the weaving room. She surveyed the situation there, and then she shook her head in a sad way, walked out the door and glided across the surface of the mill pond into the darkness.

Many operators, plain sensible folks not easily deceived, swear they leaned out the windows of that old mill and watched the woman in black glide gracefully across the pond and disappear in the night.

And many of them believe they saw the ghost of Willie Youngblood's mother, come back to look for her little boy.