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Tess of the Storm Country

by Grace Miller White · English · Gutenberg #22064 · 547,042 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Tess of the Storm Country

Author: Grace Miller White

Illustrator: Howard Chandler Christy


        
Release date: July 13, 2007 [eBook #22064]
                Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

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TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY

by

GRACE MILLER WHITE

Illustrations by Howard Chandler Christy







New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers

Made in the United States of America



Copyright, 1909, by
W. J. WATT & COMPANY



WITH
LOVE AND GRATITUDE
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO
MY FATHER






TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY

CHAPTER I


One September afternoon, not many years ago, three men sat on the banks
of Cayuga Lake cleaning the fish they had caught in their nets the
previous night. When they glanced up from their work, and looked beyond
the southern borders of the lake, they could see, rising from the mantle
of forestry, the towers and spires of Cornell University in Ithaca City.
An observer would have noticed a sullen look of hatred pass
unconsciously over their faces as their eyes lighted on the distant
buildings, for the citizens of Ithaca were the enemies of these squatter
fishermen and thought that their presence on the outskirts of the town
besmirched its fair fame. Not only did the summer cottages of the
townfolk that bordered the lake, look down disdainfully upon their
neighbors, the humble shanties of the squatter fishermen, but their
owners did all they could to drive the fishermen out of the land. None
of the squatters were allowed to have the title of the property upon
which their huts stood, yet they clung with death-like tenacity to their
homes, holding them through the rights of the squatter-law, which
conceded them the use of the land when once they raised a hut upon it.
Sterner and sterner the authorities of Ithaca had made the game laws
until the fishermen, to get the food upon which they lived, dared only
draw their nets by night. In the winter whilst the summer residents were
to be found again in the city, Nature herself made harder the lot of
these squatters, by sealing the lake with thick ice, but they faced the
bitter cold and frozen surroundings with stolid indifference.

A grim silence had reigned during which the three men had worked with
feverish haste, driven on by the vicissitudes of their unwholesome
lives. Moving his crooked legs upon the hot sand and closing a red lid
over one white blind eye, Ben Letts spoke viciously.

"Tess air that cussed," said he, "that she keeps on saying fishes can
feel when they gets cut. She air worse than that too."

"And she do say," put in Jake Brewer, grasping a large pickerel and
thrusting his blade into its quivering body after removing the scales,
"that it hurts her insides to see the critters wriggle under the knife.
She air that bad too."

Ben Letts scratched his head tentatively.

"She ain't had no bringin' up," he resumed, again plying the
sharp-bladed knife to his scaly victims, "and they do say as how when
she air in a tantrum she'll scratch her dad's face, jumpin' on his back
like a cat. Orn air a fool, I say."

"So says I too," agreed Brewer; "no wonder his shoulders air humped. But
you never hears as much as a grunt from him. He knows he ain't never
give her no bringin's up, that's why."

"Some folks has give their kids bringin's up," interposed Ben Letts with
a glance at the third man, who was industriously cleaning fish and had
not yet spoken. "And they hain't turned out no better than Tessibel
will."

At this the industrious one turned.

"I spose ye be a hittin' at my poor Myry, Ben," he muttered. "I spose ye
be, but God'll some time let me kill the man, and then ye won't be
hittin' at her no more, 'cause there won't be nothin' to hit at. It air
dum hard to keep a girl from the wrong way, love her all ye will."

For an instant Ben Letts dropped his head.

"We always wondered who he was, but more wonder has been goin' on why ye
ain't made no offer to find the fellow."

"Ain't had no time," said the desperate cleaner of fish; "had to get
bread and beans, to say nothin' of bacon."

"But why didn't ye send the brat to the workhouse?" asked Jake.

"Satisfied" Longman, as he was called, shook his head.

"I was satisfied to let it stay," was all he answered.

"My old mammy says," offered Ben Letts, "as how yer son Ezy asked
Tessibel Skinner to marry him and as how she slicked him in the face
with a dirty dishrag."

He slowly closed the scarlet lids over his crossed eyes, suspending the
pickerel in his hand the while.

"Tess ain't had no mother," remonstrated Longman, after a long silence,
pausing a moment in his bloody work and allowing his eyes to rest upon
the magnificent buildings of the University, rearing above the town,
"and Myry says that them what has ought to be satisfied."

Just then a shadow fell upon the shore of the lake near the fishermen.

"There air Tess now," muttered Letts and his two companions eyed a
figure clad in rags, with flying copper-colored hair and bare dirty
feet, which dropped down beside Longman without asking whether or no.

"Cleanin' fish?" she queried.

"Can't ye see?" growled Ben.

"'Course I can," she answered; "just wondered if ye knowed yerselves."

"Where be yer dad?" queried Longman, smiling as he caught up two long
fish, depositing one beside him where it flopped helplessly about upon
the hot sand.

"Gone to Ithacy," replied Tessibel, and without change of expression or
color caught the floundering fish in her dirty fingers.

"I air a hittin' the little devil on the head with a stone," said she,
and with a pointed rock she expertly tapped the fish three times behind
the beady eyes and threw him down again motionless.

"Suppose seein' the fish wrigglin' gives Tessibel mollygrubs in her
belly," grinned Jake Brewer, but Ben Letts broke in.

"How be yer toad to-day, Tessibel?"

This he said with a malevolent smile, as he took from his pocket a huge
hunk of tobacco and munched a generous mouthful therefrom.

"Pretty well," answered Tess pertly, and measuring the blue water with
her eye, she sent a flat stone skipping across it. Then with darkening
face she wheeled about upon the heavy squatter.

"But air it any of yer business how my toad air, Ben Letts?"

"Naw," laughed Ben, nudging Jake in the ribs with his bare elbow, "only
I thought as how he might be dead." Then he whispered to Brewer, "Wait
till I get at him."

"Dead--dead, who said as how he air dead? Ye in't been a rubberin' in
his hole, have ye, Ben Letts?"

Ben only laughed in reply.

"Ye have, Ben Letts, ye have, damn ye," screamed the girl now glowering
above the fishermen with eyes changing to the deep copper of her hair.
"Take that, and that, and that."

She had snatched the long fish from his fingers, and with swift swirls
slapped it thrice into the fisherman's face. Turning she flashed away,
her long shadows giving out the smaller ones of the tatters that hung
about her.

"I'll be goldarned," gasped Letts, "and I'll be goldarned twice if I
don't get even with her some of these here days. The devil's built his
nest in her alright, and if hell fire don't get her, it'll be 'cause she
air burned up by her own cussed wickedness."

He rubbed his face frantically with the soiled sleeve of his shirt,
spitting out the scales and blood that hat lodged between his
dark-colored teeth.

"Ye're always a tormentin' her, Ben," said Longman; "now if ye was only
satisfied to let her alone, I air a thinkin' that she wouldn't bother
ye. Tess air a good girl, for Myry says as how she can hush the brat
when he air a howlin' like a nigger."

"She'll cast a spell over him, that's what she will," muttered Ben
Letts. "Her ma could take off warts afore she was knee high to a
grasshopper, and so can Tess. Once she whispered ten off from Minister
Graves' hand under his very eyes when he was a laughin' at the idee."

"Wish they'd lit on his nose," broke out Jake Brewer, darkly, "he
wouldn't be makin' it so hard for us down here. He gets his bread on
Sunday if any man does. But they do say as how, when he sees Tess a
comin' along, he scoots like a jack-rabbit."

"Sposin' the Dominie don't laugh now, sposin' he don't," put in Longman
with a chuckle, "he air lost the ten warts, ain't he? Tess ain't the
worst in this here county."

"She can keep the bread-risin' from comin' up," objected Brewer; "she
did it with us one day last winter. She scooted by our hut and down
dropped the yeast. Wouldn't as much as let her step her foot in my
kitchen bakin' day. Air we goin' out again to-night, fellers?"

"Yep," answered Ben Letts. "Sposin' Orn'll go, too. He air in town but
he'll get back, Orn will. There ain't no man on the shores of this here
lake that can pull a net with a steady hand like Orn Skinner. Pity he
has such a gal."

Letts gave another wipe at the scales which still clung to his neck and
his eyes glittered evilly as he looked in the direction the girl had
taken. He turned when Longman touched his arm. For years it had been the
custom of the fishermen to allow the subject of netting to remain
undiscussed. They plied their trade, spent a term in prison if detected,
and returned to again take up their occupation of catching and selling
fish. Ben Letts knew he was venturing upon dangerous ground.

"Broad daylight," he growled, catching the expression upon his
companion's face, "and there ain't no one in sight that'll tell."

"Better be satisfied to keep yer mouth shut, Ben Letts," cautioned
Longman, "nettin' air bad for the man what gets caught."

"Got any bait out there?" he finished, pointing lakeward to a bobbing
box anchored a distance from the shore.

"Not a damn bit," replied Jake Brewer, "don't need it now. Keep the bait
cars a floatin' to blind the eyes of some guy that might be a rubberin'.
They don't know a minnie from a whale, those city coves don't."

"Ain't that Orn's boat comin' under the shadders of the trees?" queried
Longman, rising to his feet and wiping his long jack-knife on his
blue-jeans breeches. "Yep, it air him," he added, getting a closer look
at the approaching flat-bottomed boat in which sat a big
round-shouldered individual working vigorously away at the oars. Orn
Skinner was called the "Giant Fisherman," because even in his bare feet
he was seven inches above every other man in the settlement. Two
enormous humps stood side by side on his shoulders, and a grizzled head
lifted and sank with each sweep of the oars. Glancing around to direct
his course, Skinner saw the men waiting for him in front of Jake
Brewer's hut. With a sharp turn he swung the boat shoreward and a few
vigorous strokes sent it grating upon the sand. Jumping out he dragged
the boat to a safe mooring, from where the waves could not beat it back
into the lake.




CHAPTER II


In the beginning, it is said, God made the heavens and the earth. He
made the seas and all that in them is, with the myriads of fish, the
toads, the snakes and afterward man. Then to grace His handiwork, He
created the heart of a woman--the loving, suffering, unteachable heart
of Eve.

The first tinge of thinking sorrow comes into a woman's heart at the age
of fifteen, and this was the beginning of Tessibel's sorrow, as she
lifted her feet over the hot sands and sped onward. Tessibel was what
most people would call a careless, worthless jade. She shamefully
neglected her father, but covered the fact to him by the wild, willful
worship which she bestowed upon him. If he uttered a word of
disapprobation she would fling herself, like a cat, upon his crooked
shoulders and bend back his head until the red of her lips met his---
the pathos in her red-brown eyes quieting his qualms as to the dirt he
had to go through to get into bed.

In the mornings, either in summer or winter, he was obliged to tumble
the ragged girl from the roped cot he had made for her (when at last she
had reached an age too old to sleep with him), and force her, grumbling
the while, to eat the bacon and fish he had prepared. But he seemed
happy through it all, for the brown-eyed girl brought back to his mind
the slip of a fishermaid who had died when Tessibel was born. True,
there was more copper in the girl's hair and eyes than there had been
in the mother's--more of the bright burnishing like that of a polished
old-fashioned kettle hanging over the spigot in a tidy housewife's
kitchen. But Tessibel's one room was never tidy nor had she a kettle. In
one iron frying pan she cooked the fish and bacon, while a small tin
pail held the water for the tea. These were the only cooking utensils of
the hut.

Tess could climb to the top of the highest pine tree in the forest
yonder; she could squirm through the underbrush with the agility of a
rabbit. She loved every crawling, hateful thing, such as all honest
people despised, and she once fought with the son of an uphill farmer
for robbing a bird's nest, making him give up the eggs and restoring
them herself to the top of a pine tree in the fodder lot of Minister
Graves.

According to the ideas of all who knew her, save her father and Myra
Longman, Tessibel was full of eccentric traits; for who but Tess would
feel the "mollygrubs," as Ben Letts had said, at the wriggling of the
agonized perch and pickerel, as they flopped painfully upon the sands;
or who but Tess would mind the squeaking of the mother-bird calling for
her own. It was something of this "mollygrub" feeling that hastened her
dirt-caked feet, as she rounded the mud cellar near her father's hut,
and sped back of the weeping willow tree hanging in green fringes over
the cabin. She dropped quickly upon her knees before a large log, which
in some former time the flood-waters had dashed to its place.

Tessibel ran her red, bare arm into the hole in the end of the log. Then
she sat up and gazed around.

"He air gone," she said aloud, "he air gone. Ben Letts has took him,
damn his dirty hide. He ain't no more good than--"

Something caused her to close her lips. A large high-warted toad sprang
into her dirty lap and slipped to the ground through the rent in her
skirt. Tenderly she took the reptile in her fingers, for she loved this
warted monster who seemed by the turn of his head to reciprocate in some
way the devotion the girl showered upon him. She lifted him close to her
face, and intently searched his poppy eyes.

"I said, damn his hide, Frederick," she said in a low tone, "'cause I
thought he took ye. And ye ain't done nothin' to him, have ye? Ye was
just out huntin' flies, wasn't ye, Frederick? Don't never stay long or
ye'll git hit with a spear. Ezry Longman don't like ye nuther, 'cause I
kisses ye, and 'cause, on my birthday, I hit his mug with a dishrag when
he was tryin' to kiss me fifteen times, and was askin' me to marry him.
I'd rather kiss--"

Her sentence remained unfinished. She looked up to see a tall boy
leaning upon a rake, a boy with pale gray eyes, and an evil face. His
short hair looked as if it had passed through the fingers of a prison
barber. His blue-jean breeches were held up by a rope fastened in the
button holes with small iron nails, and the blue blouse which had been
clean that morning was now drenched with perspiration.

"Ain't ye got nothin' better to do than to be kissin' a toad," he
expostulated, without waiting for the girl to greet him, although she
had risen to her feet, holding fast to her reptile treasure.

"Ain't nothin' to you, air it, what I does as long as Daddy don't care?"
she retorted, and sullenly counted one, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, eight long weeping willow leaves which had died that day and had
fallen to the ground. She gathered each leaf between her great bare toe
and its next-door neighbor, deftly throwing them aside as she counted.

"I care," stolidly said the boy coming nearer, "and ye air a goin' to
throw that toad away, does ye see? Ma says as how ye could be made into
a woman if ye hadn't got batty with birds and things. She says as how
when ye sing to the brat that yer voice sounds like an angel's, and
that's why the kid sleeps. He air a cryin' all the time to have ye sing
to him."

Tess hadn't expected this. She did love the tiny unwelcome child of Myra
Longman, a child without a father, or a place in the world. Tess loved
the babe because there was an expression in its eyes that she had once
seen in a wounded baby bird's ... a pitiful unborn expression which
would go with the brat to its grave.

She stooped down and placed the toad again in his hole, shoving him deep
down into his cavity, for the sun was going down and Frederick would
sleep as long as there were no flies about.

The boy spoke again.

"Mammy says as how if ye don't stop runnin' wild ye'll be worse than
Myry with another--"

Suddenly the clenched fist of the girl flew up and struck the fisherman
with a swiftness and force that took him from his feet. Tessibel was
standing over him rigidly.

"I hates ye, I hates ye, I'd ruther marry--yep, I'd ruther marry my toad
or a man as ugly as him than you, Ezry Longman, does yer hear, does yer
hear?"

The lumbering body raised itself from the ground. The squint eyes were
almost closed, only a glint of the gray ring that surrounded the pupil
showing between the lids.

"Ye think that ye can hide from me what ye be a doin'," burst out Ezra.
"Why did ye name that toad after the student of Minister Graves? Just
'cause he wears nice clothes and don't do no honest rakin' of hay, nor
catchin' a fish only by trollin'. Ye loves that feller, that's what ye
does."

Bewilderment leapt alive in the girl's brown eyes. The shade deepened
almost to black as the thought the boy had planted in the sensitive mind
took root and grew. Then the dirty young face flooded with crimson which
tinted the rounded neck and colored the low forehead, and Tess dropped
down beside the log and covered her face with her hands. The fisherman
was so surprised that he uttered not a word while the wild storm broke
over the girl's heart, dying away in a smothered moan.

Without a glance at the boy, she lifted herself slowly from the earth
and walking, erect and tall, into her father's hut, closed the door with
a bang. She slipped the leather fastening into its place and dazedly
adjusted the iron peg in the opening to hold it. Tessibel's heart had
manifested its hitherto unknown burden and the woman lived amid the dirt
and squalor of the fisherman's cabin.

Tessibel's peremptory leaving and the hauteur in her face were so
foreign to her that Ezra Longman did not dare follow. He leaned upon his
rake looking after her, his gray eyes gathered into an incomprehensive
squint. Had Tess again cuffed his ears, he would have been secretly
delighted; but this manner, so unlike her, seemed to take her as far
above him as that flock of black crows yonder, flying to the forest to
find shelter for the night.

"Tessibel," he called helplessly, under his breath, but Tessibel did not
hear. He limped away not knowing that she had passed as effectually out
of his life as if she had not dwelt in the rickety cabin on his right.




CHAPTER III


Ben Letts rose to his feet after cleaning his jack-knife in the water
and took the same path around the mud cellar which Tessibel had taken.
The cabin door was closed--Tess nowhere in sight. Ben had intended--Ben
didn't know just what his intentions were. He stopped short when his
eyes fell upon Frederick's log. It took a long time for a thought to be
born in the dense brain of the fisherman, but one was there, for the
cross eyes opened and the red tongue licked greedily at the thick chops
like that of a wolf when he comes upon prey for which he does not have
to fight. Letts looked sneakily at the hut window where hung the
remnants of a ragged curtain--all was quiet. He quickly ran his long arm
into the opening of the log and with a snap of his teeth drew out the
high-backed toad.

Holding the reptile in his hand, he slunk behind the willow tree and
stood an instant in abstract hesitation. Suddenly his fiendish face
became flooded with the exultation of a plan fully matured. He let the
toad fall to the ground, needing both hands to draw the blade of his
jack-knife. Frederick hopped vigorously along in the direction of his
log, but Ben, gorged with the instincts of an inquisitor, snatched him
up as he was about to escape. After divesting Frederick of all the
ornaments which nature had given him, the man allowed him to hop about,
grinning, as he watched the rapid leaps of the toad. Frederick had
forgotten the path to his log, he could only turn around and around as
if he had been born to radiate in a circle. Ben could have watched this
tumbling toad all night, so great was his joy at the sight, but it was
getting dark and soon the call would come for the fishermen to gather
for the netting and he would be expected to go.

Taking the toad gingerly up from the earth, he returned it to the hole
in the log, and with but a hasty glance at the dirty curtain which hung
limp and ugly at the cabin window, sneaked away.

       *       *       *       *       *

After leaving Ezra Longman, Tessibel stood in the cabin for one single
moment with the terrible thought which the boy had planted there,
burning in her brain. She had but a few times seen the minister's son
who lived in the big house on the hill and not even to herself had she
mentioned that he was her ideal of manhood--he was as far above her as
the learned minister was above her own squatter father. Her heart seemed
to almost stop beating as she sprang headlong into "Daddy's bed" and
covered herself with the ragged blanket.

Only when she heard her father pounding at the door did she lift her
head. She jumped swiftly from the bed to let him in. No thought of
supper for him had entered her mind. He looked his hunger as he noted
the absence of a fire, and spoke rather mournfully, but Tess cut him
short. The lithe young form bounded squarely upon the bible-back of the
fisherman. She drew back his shaggy head, her bright wide eyes shining
into Skinner's and a low voice deepened by the first arousal of womanly
emotion which had ever come knowingly into the young life, was murmuring
to him.

"I loves ye, Daddy, I do. What does ye care for supper when I loves ye
like this. Daddy, I could--just bite ye hard, that I could, I love ye
so."

"Get off my back, Tess," ordered Skinner, trying to loosen her fingers
from his hair. "I air tired, Brat, and there be nettin' to-night. Ye air
goin' to Mis' Longman's till we get back."

"Won't get off till ye kisses me square on the bill, Daddy," replied the
girl softly, "square where I does my eatin's." And square on "the bill"
the girl got the caress--and then eagerly hastened to fry the inevitable
fish.

"I air coming after ye to Longman's when the nettin's over," broke in
Orn Skinner presently, his mouth full of bread and fish, "and ye'd best
duck yer head in the lake, Tess, afore ye go. Yer face has a week's dirt
caked on it."

Tessibel allowed her red lips to spread wide in a loving smile.

"Ye air a durn good Daddy, ye air, and I loves ye, if my face be dirty."

She rose quickly and came to his side.

"Daddy," she began, twisting his big head so her eyes met his, "Can't I
go nettin' to-night? I air a good helper, ain't I, Daddy?"

Orn Skinner dreaded the wheedling tone in Tessibel's voice and the
pleading in the eyes so like her mother's. He dropped his gaze upon his
plate and slowly shook his head.

"Nope, Tess, ye air goin' to Longman's. Don't ... now there be a kiss
... sit down and eat ... that air a good brat."

The last ejaculation was brought forth by Tess herself. She had turned
back to her place at the table and had complacently begun to eat the
crisp, brown fish.

"And ye ain't to stay on the ragged rocks, nuther, Tess," cautioned
Skinner, rising from the table. "Ye be a good Tess. Scoot along now."

The fisherman moved lumberingly to the water's edge, pushing his boat
into the lake, and stepped in. Thrusting his powerful head down between
his shoulders, he pulled lazily away at the oars until he lost sight of
the shore on which stood the small silent figure in the fast gathering
gloom.

       *       *       *       *       *

Tess did not fancy netting nights. She always feared that something
might happen to her father. But she knew, too, that they could not live,
even meagerly, through the long winter unless the nets were used. So
this night after she had received many kisses, "square on the bill," she
watched her father's bent shoulders, rising and falling with the motion
of the oars as long as she could see him, and turning, scudded through
the underbrush which grew in profusion near the forest--up to the rugged
rocks toward the Longmans' hut. She slid down beside a large stone as
she heard the lapping of oars below her on the lake, and knew that
"Satisfied" Longman and his son Ezra were going to join the others at
Jake Brewer's shanty.

She was alone under the heavens, alone with the eagles and sleepy
twittering birds--she could think of what had been forced upon her that
day. She bitterly regretted the tears shed before Ezra, and she must
never, never again look at the student Graves. She felt that to see his
face, even from a distance, would cause her to drop dead before him.
Every muscle tingled and her eyes burned with unshed tears. She had
never dared to speak even to his sister, the pretty Teola Graves, who
fluttered about with pink ribbons among her curls and wore high heels on
her shoes.

Suddenly Tess opened her lips and sent ringing over the lake in glorious
tones of pathos, the hymn she loved best,

        "Rescue the perishin',
         Care for the dyin'."

       *       *       *       *       *

Tessibel knew what it meant to almost perish from the cold. She had felt
the cruel blasts of the winter winds upon her chilblained feet, for she
had never known the luxury of shoes. She had also seen the dying and
understood what it meant to turn a longing face toward heaven, with a
burning desire to know what was beyond.

Such a voice as Tessibel's had never been heard upon Cayuga lake. Ben
Letts said it put him in mind of listening to the wild cry of a lost
soul, while Myra Longman could hear only the songs of angels in the
exquisite tones which fell, pure and sweet, from the red lips. Tess knew
nothing of breath power, nothing of trained trilling tones, but nature
had given her both and like the birds of the air she used them.

The girl had not moved from beside the stone near which she had fallen.
The night was so strange, so different from any night Tessibel had ever
known. Her whole idea of life had been altered that day by the word of
a fisherman, and the woman's heart grew larger and larger, until the
squatter girl felt that it was going to burst. Something crawled over
her bare foot and brought her to her senses. Leaning over she drew to
her lap a long, slimy lizard, which she held caressingly in her fingers.
She lifted him high up and looked at him through the moonlight.

"Green," she said slowly, "ain't he a dandy. But I don't dare carry him
even a little way for fear he'll lose his house. I bet he has a pile of
green babies."

Dropping the lizard beside the rock, she sped away.

Just before reaching the Longman cabin, she raised her voice and sang
again,

        "Rescue the perishin',
         Care for the dyin'."

Some one opened the door and she bounded in.

"Glad ye come, Tessibel," said Mrs. Longman, a small wizened old woman.
"The brat air sick to-day. He does nothin' but squall so that my head
air a bustin' the hours through. Give him to Tessibel, Myry."

"After she air rested a spell," replied Myra, who resembled her mother,
but was smaller and thinner. "He seems to have a pain, Tess."

"Mebbe he has," responded Tessibel, "give him to me."

The wee boy stopped his tears immediately. His back grew limp and his
fists opened out as Tessibel began to sing. This time the song was, "Did
ye ever go into an Irishman's shanty?"

The child fell asleep and Tessibel laid him gently in the box prepared
for him. Bed room was scarce in the huts of the fishermen and the small
members of the family slept on rope beds, let down from the ceiling. But
Myra's child, still too tender and always sick, slept in a box which his
grandfather, "Satisfied" Longman, had made for him as soon as he was
born.

"It air a seemly night for the men to fish," commented Myra when
Tessibel had seated herself again. "I air always a hopin' that nothin'
will happen to none of them."

"The hull bunch air cute," assured Tessibel, "and Daddy can row faster
than any man on this here lake."

"But when them game men gets after 'em with the permit to shoot, that's
what I fears," complained Mrs. Longman--and she sighed.

The fisherwoman's life she had led had been harder than most women bore,
for Ezra was going a crooked path, while Myra, well--the brat slept in
the cradle. Both girls saw her glance toward it and read her thoughts.

Myra's face deepened in color, Tessibel hummed a tune.

"'Taint no use to try to bring up children anywheres decent," the woman
broke in sharply, after a silent moment. "God! but to see one's own--"

"Ma," Myra's voice was pleading, "it air over and ye said--"

"I knows I did, and so did yer Daddy. But I ain't thinkin' only of ye
to-night, Myra, look at the mess that Ezry's a makin' of things, and
just 'cause ye won't marry him, Tessibel."

"I ain't never goin' to marry no one," said Tess sullenly; "goin' to
stay with Daddy."

"Yer Daddy won't live allers," interposed Mrs. Longman, "and what's
more, yer better off with a man what will look after ye as Ezy will. Be
ye a thinkin' of it at all, Tessibel?"

The girl shook her head.

"Nope, 'taint no use; don't like Ezy anyway."

"Ezry ain't the worst boy in the world," defended the mother; "if the
right woman gets him, Tess, he'll make her a good man. Ye couldn't think
of tryin' him, could ye?"

Tessibel shook her head again. She shuddered perceptibly, and Myra
thought she realized the feeling in the girl's heart.

"Don't bother her, ma, don't bother--"

"If ye'd a bothered a little yerself, Myra," broke in the woman
pettishly, "we might all been better off. It ain't 'cause of the brat,
air it, Tessibel?"

She shot a glance at the infant's box.

"Why 'cause of the brat," asked Tessibel sharply, "why 'cause of the
brat?"

"He air a come-be-chance, ye know--"

"That ain't no fault of his'n, air it," demanded Tessibel. "Nope,
'tain't nothin' to do with the brat. I loves him, I does, come-be-chance
or no. It don't make no difference to me."

Myra pressed Tessibel's bare toe with hers in loving fellowship.

"Ye allers was a funny gal, Tessibel," ruminated Mrs. Longman. "Now Ezy
says that yer takin' a likin' to such things as toads, lizards and
snakes, shows as how ye needs some one to help ye. God'll make ye a
happy mother if ye'll keep yer nose low in the air, and not think too
much of yer betters."

Ezra, then, had told his mother of the student. A frown deepened on the
girl's brow. She hated Ezra Longman with an inward fury for what he had
said that day.

"Ye might have a come-be-chance, yerself, Tessibel," warned Mrs. Longman
as she went to bed, clambering up the long ladder to the loft, leaving
the girls alone.




CHAPTER IV


Outside the Longman hut the wind had quickened its pace up the dark
lake, but inside there was no sound save the small snore of the infant.

"Don't hurt you and me bein' friends, does it, Myry," broke in Tessibel
impetuously, "'cause I can't love Ezry?"

"Nope, I wouldn't love him nuther. Ma don't know all that's to know and
I wouldn't a married the brat's pa if I could," and she shivered, for
she knew that she had lied to Tess.

This was the first time Myra had mentioned her trouble, that is, in just
that confidential manner. Tessibel came closer. Had it not been a
mystery since the coming of the brat, who had been responsible for his
tiny life?

"It air some un what ye knows, too, Tessibel," Myra said, shifting her
eyes from her companion's face to the box where the infant lay, but Tess
did not ask the name. Suddenly Myra leaned over and whispered something
in the other girl's ear, and Tessibel started as if she had been stung
by an adder.

"Nope ... it ain't him," she cried, starting up, "he air bad but not so
bad as that."

"It were him," replied Myra, "and he beat me that night on the ragged
rocks and that air what broke my arm. Ye remember?"

Tessibel nodded. She had heard a secret that not even Myra's mother
knew--she felt intuitively that Myra intended her to keep silent. She
did not dare to speak again, fearing the woman above was not asleep. But
Myra, with less fear, resumed,

"'Taint no hopin' the brat will live, and if he does he'll get his
eatin's alright. What brats don't? But, Tessibel, I telled ye this to
keep ye away from the ragged rocks for there air no tellin' what will
happen to ye. And yer that pretty--"

Tessibel stared blankly.

"Pretty! pretty!" she gasped, stumbling over the words, "ye say pretty.
Me--pretty, Myra Longman?"

"As if ye didn't know it," scoffed Myra, "but yer face air allers so dum
dirty that ye can't see nothin' but yer eyes, and yer matty old hair--it
air a shame to live like ye do."

Tessibel sat up. This was her first ambitious moment. Never had lips
said such things to her, and she had always known Myra Longman. Rising
from the chair she disappeared into the outer room, and Myra could hear
the splashing of water and the shuffling of feet as Tessibel stood first
on one and then the other, washing her dirty face. She mopped the long
red hair in and out of the wash-basin, and Myra was not prepared for the
vision which Tessibel made in her new state of cleanliness. The impetus
of being good-looking by an effort of her own had blackened the copper
colored eyes. The long fringed lashes dripped with pearls of water while
the skin had reddened from the vigorous rubbing, but it was very, very
clean.

"I wants yer comb, Myry Longman," said Tessibel slowly shaking herself
like a big dog.

Myra hesitated.

"Ye got too much dirt in your hair yet," said she, "but if ye'll take
care of yer mop, I'll be givin' ye a comb to yourself."

Tess did not deny the accusation of her filth. She took the comb and
drew it through the wet locks. Myra was regarding her critically.
Tessibel--was beautiful. In the last year Ezra's sister had seen the
change coming. The complexion had whitened under the perpetual dirt and
the long eyes had gathered an expression of knowledge, while their color
changed from light to dark with passing emotions.

Myra bent her brows as she examined Tessibel closer. The skin was clean
and shone with the glossiness of much soap. The low brow was covered
with small wet ringlets, which turned and twisted here and there in
luxurious confusion. Over the shoulders, hidden by a soiled calico
blouse, the copper colored mass hung in dripping flame-like waves.

"You air pretty," said Myra slowly, "but ye air so dum dirty no one can
ever see it. Why ain't you washed up like that every day?"

"Never knowed how before. Didn't see nothin' to keep clean in my face."

As Tessibel spoke she stood before the glass looking at her own
image--spying upon the prettiness which Myra said was there.

"This hair air like red snakes," she gasped passionately. "Just like the
snakes that eats the little birds in the spring. In the sun their backs
air red like this--and this--and this."

She was angrily tearing at the beautiful tightly curled ringlets with
but one thought dominating her brain. Students never liked red haired
girls with eyes which looked like copper.

"Don't," ordered Myra, catching the rough hands as they pulled at the
profusion of redness. "Don't, ye air tearin' it out by the roots, and it
looks like--like the sun when it air goin' down in one ball of fire. It
air beautiful."

Beautiful! beautiful! Tessibel caught her breath and looked at Myra with
a yellowish glint, born of a new emotion in her eyes. Was the brat's
mother making fun of her? All her short life had this been Tessibel's
portion. Ben Letts had followed her along the ragged rocks over which
her bare feet flew with the swiftness of eagle's wings and when he found
she could not be induced to stop he would shout in defiance, "Brick top,
red head," and such names that went deep into the sensitive little
heart. When she reached home she would tear at the curls and cut them
fiercely with the knife which her father used to skin his fish and large
eels. Yet nature would send more and more of the burnished gold to adorn
Tessibel's head, and not until to-night had she ever heard one word in
praise of it.

The reformation had begun. Tessibel went again to the soap and water and
Myra looking through the crack of the door, saw Tess dragging madly at
her hair, sopping it first in the pan and then in the deep bucket which
Ezra used to give the pig their swill. Once Myra saw the mass of gold
disappear into the pail, and when Tessibel came again to view she was
sputtering, coughing, and blowing the cold water from her nose and
mouth.

"Won't be much left if ye keeps on at yer hair that way," called Myra
grimly, "but the soap air good for cleanin' it. There air other days and
nights, too," she went on sarcastically, "and it air almost midnight.
Yer Daddy'll be here soon. Wonder if the game warden air out to-night?"

As if in answer to her question they heard the dipping of oars and a
little later a boat was dragged to its moorings on the shore.
"Satisfied" Longman entered with his son and Ben Letts.

"Daddy were tired and didn't come for me?" asked Tessibel.

"Your Daddy didn't come child," replied the elder Longman, whilst Ben
Letts stood with his squint eyes lowered. He had an exquisite feeling
within him, longing for the sight of the girl after she had heard their
news.

"I air goin' home to Daddy--I ain't afeared to go home alone," she said
stoutly and defiantly, for Ben Letts made a move to accompany her. "I
ain't afeared of the night things, nor nothin' that crawls nor flies. Ye
knows I ain't afeared, Myra."

"Ye ain't goin' home to-night, Tessibel," said Long man, "for yer father
ain't there."

At first Tessibel didn't comprehend. She thought of the care which was
taken to keep the fish fresh for the market. Daddy was putting the
pickerel and numerous eels in the blind fish cars until they could be
cleaned. She looked into "Satisfied" Longman's face.

"Air he a carin' for the fish?"

Longman shook his head in the negative.

"Where air he then?"

Tessibel's voice was sharp and penetrating. It awoke Mrs. Longman
upstairs and the infant in the box beside the rope cot.

"He air gone to prison," put in Ezra opening and shutting his eyes, and
licking his thick lips with his red tongue. "He air where ye won't see
him to scratch his face when ye goes into a tantrum. He air in prison."

The bronze eyes widened and lengthened till the very fear in them
startled her companions. The tall, slight figure with its weight of
rags, swayed to the hut floor--the clean shining face gathered into a
painful pucker, while the two fists which had fought many a hard battle,
clenched until the nails entered the calloused skin under each finger.
Not one word came from the tightened white lips. The dumb agony was
worse than a child's frantic scream of fear. Somehow, Ben's mind went
back to the toad, when it also had borne its misery dumbly.

"Satisfied" Longman, stooping down, grasped the girl and stood her on
her feet. No one had ever seen Tess like this. Ben leered, the sides of
his fat cheeks protruding in the joyful emotion he felt at Tessibel's
suffering.

"He killed the gamekeeper," he grinned, leaning back against the wall.
"He air where ye won't hurt him now."

The tortured Tess could bear no more. She had striven to be brave when
she thought of "Daddy" in the small cell which she had heard many times
vividly described. She had thought vaguely of months, perhaps a whole
year without him, but Ben's words made her father a murderer, and
murderers went away sometimes never to return. Her Daddy!--and Ezra had
said that she could never scratch his face again. She hurt Daddy? Did
every one in the settlement think that? She sank down beside Myra's
father and winding her arms about his legs implored him to say that it
was only Ben's and Ezra's fun.

"It air fun, only fun, Satisfied, ain't it," she pleaded, "for Daddy,
poor old Daddy, never killed no man."

"We all says as how it were a mistake," replied Longman. "Ben says the
gun went off in yer Daddy's hands and the warden dropped, and the other
gamekeeper took yer Daddy away at the point of his pistol. I were at the
north reel and couldn't save him nohow."

Tessibel understood. It was all plain now. She loosened her arms and
painfully raised herself. The shock had hurt her flesh, and made her
sore and lame. She started dazedly toward the door, "Satisfied" trying
to stop her flight, but the strong young body, mad with grief and newly
found despair, slipped through the friendly fingers, and the night,
Tessibel's night, gathered her into its arms, till she was lost in the
long shadows of the pine forest.




CHAPTER V


A night owl hooted in Tessibel's ear as she ran. A bat whirled into her
face--then took himself off. Over the shadowy rocks which cut and
bruised her feet, Tessibel flew.

Daddy was home in the shanty; he was in his bed tired from hauling his
nets. She remembered Ezra had grinned at her as with one hasty look she
had fixed his face in her mind. He had lied to her. Daddy was in the
hut, and if he were up waiting for her--there passed through Tessibel's
small mind the thought of how joyfully she would hop to the bowed
shoulders, and she longed for the kisses she knew would be hers. She
halted before the dark hut and waited. Insects whizzed about her ears as
though they little feared her. The long branches of the weeping willow
dragged themselves across the tin roof with a ghostly sound. This was
Tessibel's night of heart experiences--her first day and her first
night. Oh! to go back to yesterday, with the hidden fear of the student
sleeping soundly in her breast and a Daddy, a dear stooping old Daddy.
She slipped open the shanty door, lighted a candle and looked around.
The frying pan lay bottom up on the floor where she had dropped it. The
tea pail was on the table; a cut loaf of bread lay beside it, covered
with a host of small red ants. All this was familiar to Tess. She kicked
the pan from her path with her bare foot, and sat down on the three
legged stool which her father used at his meals. Portions of fish and
plenty of bones were spread about upon the floor, but the littered
shanty did not distress her newly found notions of cleanliness.

Daddy might go away to the black place where they had taken the Canadian
Indian, who had killed his squaw. Tess remembered hearing how he had
been carried to prison, twelve men had found him guilty of the crime and
at last--Tessibel started up with a groan--the Canadian Indian had been
carried to the place where the rope was.

Daddy Skinner and the Canadian Indian. Tess dared think no longer. She
caught a glimpse of herself in the cracked mirror which Skinner used
when he plied the pinchers to his beard--and her wild eyed bronzeness
caused her to give a startled ejaculation. Daddy was gone; and Frederick
the toad, was her all. The thought of the reptile she loved brought her
quickly to her feet. Frederick should sleep in the shanty while Daddy
was away. Tessibel halted apprehensively in the open doorway.

From the shore willows, hoot owls pierced the inky night with their
sonorous cries--while in throaty discord, a million marsh frogs bellowed
farewell to summer. The lake shores caught the unceasing waves in
eternal laps, the rhythm soothing the ears of the squatter girl as her
unfathomable gaze pierced the midnight gloom. But the weight of sorrow
and longing on the strong nature, untried by emotion, strangled the
rising fear, and Tessibel advanced a step to the pebbly path. Once
outside in the darkness, she lifted her voice and repeated as of yore,

        "Rescue the perishin'
         Care for the dyin'."

Never before had the words roused her as now--Daddy Skinner needed that
refrain.

She darted around the corner of the mud cellar, and shoving her hand
into the familiar hole in the log, Tessibel drew Frederick quickly out.
She dropped him into her blouse and retraced her steps to the shanty.
She could never be lonely and quite without hope if Frederick were with
her. Hadn't she loved him for four long months, and daily fed him his
portion of flies? She took him from her bosom, where many times he had
sunk into toad dream-land, and without looking at him placed him on the
floor.

"It air a bad night for us, Frederick," she said out loud, "it air. But
you'll not sleep in the log to-night, but in Daddy's bed. And I'll just
pretend ye air Daddy, and when ye croak with the daylight ye can have
all the flies lightin' on the sugar, and then we air goin' after Daddy
and bring him home to the shanty, Frederick."

Tessibel turned her head and glanced at Frederick. Generally when she
spoke he would give an answering grunt. She gazed at him but dared not
venture closer. Had she lost her mind like Jake Brewer's sister, when
they brought home the body of her drowned husband? Tessibel lighted
another candle and then the third--the match burned low between her
fingers as she touched it to the fourth. Once more she looked upon the
horrid sight--terror striving and struggling for some outlet in her torn
young soul. Frederick blinked a pair of beady eyes, filmed with
death,--he moved a mutilated body with painful jerks, but there was
nothing to show the girl that he felt her presence. The silent awful
pulsating of the toad manifested its dumb suffering. A candle flickered
as she sought to solve the problem. The night wind flapped the dirty
curtain and Tessibel turned her head slowly toward it. A bird's cry from
somewhere in the weeping willow, came in through the window. With silent
intensity, she dragged her body slowly across the floor toward the
flattened reptile--above him she squatted--the gorgeous hair sweeping
the filth strewn floor. Tess could mark the places where the beloved
warts had been--she knew how many there were even to the tiny ones. With
the halting precision of the ignorant, she had counted them singly every
day. But the severest heart wrench of all was to come to Tess. The great
squat hind legs, which had been her pride, when Frederick jumped through
her rounded arms--curled to make a hoop--were gone, and the movements of
Frederick's body left a tiny trail of dark blood upon the shanty floor.
She couldn't touch that dying thing. In her vehement desire to relieve
him of his pain, she burst into song which went upward and outward,
ringing over the lake, returning again, only to be sent further and
further into the heavens.

        "Rescue the perishin'
         Care for the dyin'."

This was all Tessibel knew of the hymn--over and over she sang it,
fearfully watching the toad move grotesquely in the candlelight. Time
after time the blinking eyes closed and flew open--again and again
Tessibel sent her importunate prayer into the heart of the Great
Unknown.

Frederick gave a great deep sob, his fat sides lifted and fell twice,
and as the petitionate lips of the girl sent the song once more into the
night, he flopped over on his back, straightened out the little wounded
stumps, and died.

Daddy Skinner, the Canadian Indian, and Frederick! Tess couldn't
separate the three--the prayerful mood died with the toad. She opened
her lips and uttered two great piercing shrieks, which sounded and
resounded through the rafters of the shanty, out into the darkness and
up to the ragged rocks. It was the cry of a wounded human thing,
amounting to but little in the great whirling universe. The dying of the
scream brought words from her lips.

"Daddy Skinner, Daddy Skinner."

Then twice in equally shrill longing, resounded the name of her dead
friend.

"Frederick, aw, aw Frederick!"

Both cries followed the prayer, echoing their agony out through the
window--the flapping curtain with its tatters offering no impediment for
its outgoing.

Suddenly Tessibel staggered to her feet, for back to her through the
window, from somewhere near the mud cellar, came an answering voice,
deep-toned and vibrant--

"What? What?"

Frederick, the student, stood in the door of the dirty shanty, looking
upon an unkempt, copper-eyed girl, and a great squat, dead, wartless
toad.




CHAPTER VI


"You called me?"

A silence.

"You called me?"

The student repeated the words twice, so satisfied was he that his name
had been called out in tones of great insistence.

Tessibel was deaf to his words. His presence had filled her completely.
Leaning against the post of Daddy's bed, she glued her eyes upon the
student's face, the fringed lids sprung to their fullest capacity. The
extreme fascination in her gaze held the boy spellbound--then the
eyelids quivered and it was over.

Frederick glanced hurriedly about the room, the untidiness of it all
striking his sensitiveness. He noted the pungent smell of fried fish
mixed with inferior grease, the ant-covered bread, the confusion of
ragged bed-clothes, and lastly of all, the other Frederick. Tessibel
gasped as the newcomer looked longest upon her dead. She thought she saw
him shiver as he stepped back a little.

This brought her grief vividly back to her. The pain, as acute and sharp
as the knife which had ended the life of Frederick, entered her already
riven soul. The instant before a mingled sensation of shame and
embarrassment had swept over her because of the appearance of the hut,
and her own bare legs and feet; but the helpless dead sent even that
from her.

"He air gone," she said chokingly, coming forward with a totter.

Disgust rested paramount upon the student's face. Surprise followed this
as Tessibel threw herself in limp unconcern beside the other Frederick
and gathered the stiffened toad into her arms. She rocked to and fro as
a mother might who had suddenly discovered that the great White Mystery
had robbed her of her child. Tessibel's maternal instinct was being
strongly developed in her agony of the hour, and the identity of
Frederick the student, was lost in Frederick, the toad, her one little
friend, to whom she had told all her sorrows, and had been ruthlessly
torn from her. Already she could feel the short front legs growing
stiff, and the throat which had so often grunted for its supper, was
falling into a curve. The great mutilated back which had lifted and then
receded with every breath was still, and Frederick lay like the lump of
clay that he was, in the arms of his foster mother. Tessibel's child by
adoption would never again gather into his slit of a mouth the flies
which favored the sugar. Then Tess, still clasping her dead friend,
lifted her head. A stranger had intruded upon her grief. She gathered
her bruised, sore feet under the short, ragged girl's skirt, and lifted
a woman's soulful face toward the student.

"What do ye want?" she asked sullenly.

"You called me?"

"It were him I wanted," she said hysterically, hugging her little dead
burden.

"The toad?"

"Yep, he were all I had,--him and Daddy, and--Daddy Skinner air gone
too."

Then Tessibel forgot the student, and the forlorn red head with its
burden of curls lay relaxed upon the lifeless Frederick, while the
child-woman wept in abject loneliness.

Impetuously the second Frederick stepped forward, the movement closing
the door with a bang, and causing the candles to lift their smothered
flames and flicker smokily. The wind shrieked through the broken window
and the cracks between the shanty boards. A storm played with the water,
casting its grayness into white capped rollers which beat upon the shore
like the restless spirits of an ocean. Still the girl wept on,--wept for
Frederick, for Daddy, and once a shuddering thought went through her
mind of the Canadian Indian.

"He killed the gamekeeper, Ezy says,--Daddy Skinner," she whimpered.

Suddenly she sat up, her small round face puckered into such lines of
pain that the student turned his head away, feeling dangerously near
tears. He had always been taught, by his father and by his mother who
feared contagion, that of all people in the world, the squatters must be
most avoided; they had no hearts; they killed men and broke the laws
simply for their own gain. But here was a girl magnetically drawing him
toward her. Dirty? Yes, and barefooted, wild-eyed and untaught, but
suffering--and such suffering! Frederick Graves, like his father, would
teach the Gospel of Christ, of peace and good-will to all mankind,--but
the deep burnishing of the beautiful hair as it swept the floor in red
curls had much to do with Frederick's sympathy, for man-like, he looked
upon Eve in her beauty and pitied.

"Your father is Orn Skinner, who shot the gamekeeper to-night?" he
asked presently.

Tess nodded, still looking fearfully into his face.

"He was disobeying the law," replied Frederick gravely.

Again she nodded, for Tess had no spirit to thwart an argument at that
moment.

"People who disobey the law," went on the student in his youthful
righteousness, "take their life in their hands, and other people's too.
Don't you think that the woman left without her husband, the
gamekeeper's wife, is weeping for him?"

It was a new thought for Tess, but she would not harbor it. It didn't
seem quite just to Daddy. She drew down the red lips at the corners, and
helplessly clung closer and closer to the toad.

"What are you going to do?" asked the student. "You lived here with your
father, but you can't stay here alone."

"It air my home," she said distrustfully, "and I stays here and hangs to
this here shanty till Daddy comes back. Aw, he air comin' back, ain't
he? He won't go to that place--?"

She closed her lips, fearing to utter the thought.

Frederick shook his head.

"Poor child," he said, with a fatherly air. "It is a dangerous
position."

If the case had been placed before Frederick Graves to decide, yesterday
he would have hanged Orn Skinner for the murder of the gamekeeper. But
to-night--well, to-night his ideas of men and ... of women, too, had
changed.

"But he didn't mean it," went on Tess, casting back the unruly hair
which shrouded her face in its new state of cleanliness. "He wouldn't
have hurt a fly, Daddy Skinner wouldn't."

A whistle from the outside, heard plainly through the beating of the
wind, caused Frederick to fling open the door.

"Yes, father," he said loudly, "I'm here. I missed you on the way. Come
in a moment if you will."

Tessibel gathered herself more closely into a small human ball than
ever. She had feared the minister since the time she had talked off his
warts with the wizard words she had learned from a hag living on the
ragged rocks.

"What's this," demanded the Dominie, looking sternly at her, and she
dropped her eyes in confusion.

"It's Orn Skinner's girl," replied his son. "Skinner is the man who shot
Stebbins to-night. You heard Deacon Hall talking about it at the
cottage."

This explanation was superfluous, for the minister well knew the girl
and her father.

"It's a nice mess your father's got himself into," he said harshly.

Tessibel lifted her head.

"He didn't mean to do it, sir," she replied, not daring to rise, because
of her bare, long legs.

"Didn't, eh?" roared Graves in his wrath, placing his hand on his son's
shoulder. "He was right glad to have the chance to use his gun, or why
did he take it with him?"

Tessibel raised her eyes to the rafters, and her face flooded with
color. The rifle was gone--Daddy Skinner had taken it with him. She was
too young to argue with such a man and only wiped her face with her
sleeve and sobbed.

"God will see that justice is done, my girl. Your father will hang, do
you hear?" shouted Graves. "Hang by the neck till he's dead, and this
shanty will be burned with all its filth!"

Frederick clutched his father's arm, his face changing from red to white
as he watched Tessibel. She had clambered to her feet, ridiculously
tangled in the rags of her dress. The dead Frederick was forgotten,
falling with a great thud upon the floor. Her face was so mobile, so
glassily white that if the hand of death had smitten her, she could not
have looked ghastlier.

Standing before them, the tears drying over the hot blood which rushed
in torrents afresh from her heart to her face, Tessibel learned her
first lesson in suppressed emotion. She took two steps backward and
wound her hands behind the post of Daddy's old-fashioned bed.

Truly it was Tessibel's first day and first night!

"He air to be hanged dead?" she asked, the painful shiftiness of her
eyes settling questioningly upon the minister's face. "Aw, he air good,
Daddy Skinner air, gooder than ye be, with ye cross and ye crown that ye
sing about. Gooder than all ye whole church, if his gun did kill the
gamekeeper. We has our rights to live, to eat bread and beans, like ye
have, hain't we? If Daddy Skinner air hung, then Tessibel hangs too."

Here the tired young face drooped a little.

"Ye'll hang him will ye? Well! ye won't--cause--cause--"

Her red head flashed back upon the uncovered shoulders--the wild eyes
lifted a moment to the rocking rafters in the roof.

"If ye lives in the sky, Jesus, that cares for the dyin', take Daddy
Skinner and Tessibel--"

Her eyes dropped to the pan on the floor, against which the stiff body
of the toad lay, and she ended,--"And Frederick."

It was a prayer,--a rough prayer, from untaught lips, but through the
action which followed, it instantly lost its dignity. Tessibel forgot
her lesson--forgot all save the taunting face of the minister. She gave
her familiar leap in the air and came down with a cry upon the Dominie's
chest.

"Ye'll kill him, will ye? Then I--I air goin' to kill ye," and deep into
the face of the minister sunk the ten little toad-tainted fingers.

Frederick loosened her by extreme effort from his father's body and
thrust the gasping preacher outside the door. The student placed his
hand upon the panting girl's shoulder.

"You're wrong," he said gravely, "Your prayer was good and God heard.
There is in the sky a suffering Christ and His cross--and by your
prayers you may save your father, and also save--poor little Tessibel
Skinner." Then glancing about the filthy room he added, "and cleanliness
is next to godliness."

She opened the door proudly--his words had taught her a newer dignity.

"This air my shanty," she said. "I air sorry I hitted yer Daddy's face,
cause--cause he air yer Daddy. Scoot now!"




CHAPTER VII


For one short moment after the going of Frederick, Tessibel stood,
gapingly, looking out into the darkness. The student had gone and with
him her horror of the minister. The steps died away and dazedly she
closed the door. She remembered the day she had talked the warts off
from Graves' hand--remembered how he had said to her that she was
possessed of the devil. Just what that meant the child didn't know, but
the darkening frown on the minister's face plainly told her that it was
nothing pleasant--since then she had scurried away when the Dominie had
appeared.

This was the first time she had heard the student's voice, for he had
spent most of his summers away from home, and the fisherman's child had
had little chance to see him. He had said that the cross and crown would
save her daddy--had said to pray to the God of whom she knew so little,
and his words had given birth to a great faith within her.

Tessibel's fingers were stained with Frederick's blood and shudderingly
she looked at them in the candle light. Frederick lay where she had
dropped him, his fat white belly sunken and misshapened. The very
stillness of him made the girl round him in a circle, watching him with
an intentness which showed her superstitious fear of the stiffening
dead. Then her great love for him overwhelmed her and she darted like a
bird toward her friend.

"I were afraid of ye, Frederick," she groaned softly, "but I ain't no
more. Ye wouldn't hurt the kid what loves ye so, would ye, if ye air
dead."

She turned the great body over and sobbed. Again the words of the
student softened her grief, and through Frederick Graves, for the sake
of her loved ones, she accepted his mysterious far-away God and His
sacrificed Son.

With loving hands she tumbled the toad into a soiled rag and placed him
in the corner. There was nothing left for her to do save to rescue Daddy
Skinner from the black cap, and she must see him before the rising of
the sun. Mother Moll, the settlement witch, would tell her if Daddy
Skinner were in danger.

She opened the door and stood for a moment before stepping into the
abating storm. Her eyes fell upon a giant pine tree at the edge of the
forest, far beyond her father's hut. It was silhouetted against a light
streak in the southern sky, its long arms extending straight into the
air. The branches of the tree had always made a fantastic figure in
Tessibel's eyes. It took the form of a venerable old man and it had been
one of her vivid imaginings, since she could remember, that some time
the man shaped against the skies would step down in the flesh. Tess had
grown to love him in sunshine and in rain--to watch him in silent,
mystified longing as he bent toward her day after day. In the nodding
head and swaying arms, Tessibel suddenly established Frederick's deity.
As a man from the east worships his sun god through a wooden image, so
Tessibel directed a prayer to this moving figure in the pine tree. Her
pain-drawn lips parted slightly as she stood for a short space of time
watching him.

"If ye be a God," she breathed, "help me see my Daddy."

She said this with bowed head, for grief and the student's admonition
had made a path for reverence through her soul.

Then she closed the cabin door and started toward the shore. Pushing a
flat boat into the lake, which was still turbulent from the storm, she
deftly rounded the long fishing dock, rowing to the bobbing little fish
car which held Daddy's eels. She pulled out the nail, and holding up the
top of the car, ran her hand quickly about inside. Drawing out four huge
eels, she threw them into the bottom of the boat, closed the trap door
and rowed away toward the shore.

Inside the shanty, she placed the fish upon the wooden table and stood
for an instant regarding them. One long eel drew itself into tense half
circles, turning over and over until as he neared the edge of the table
Tessibel caught him. Longer the girl's eyes rested upon this one.
Suddenly she snatched him up--slipping him, wriggling, tail-end first
into the water pail, still holding fast to the pointed head.

"God made ye beautiful," she crooned, "ye can stay there and let me pet
ye. I air got to have somethin' to love."

Turning back to the table, she contemplated the remaining fish for
thirty seconds or so in indecision. Had her own desire ruled, she would
have put them all back into the lake--she would not have killed them;
but to-night--to-night it was for Daddy's sake--he was more to her than
all of nature's creatures. With expert fingers, she sent the life from
the twisting eels, and gathering them into a small bag, Tessibel slung
them over her arm and broke off into the dark forest, the twigs
cracking under her small bare feet as she went. Here and there the curls
of red hair would catch in the branches, and the girl would tear them
loose, leaving a blazed trail of copper threads marking her path.

Up to the ragged rocks she went, through the gorges and brooks until she
came in sight of a small dark hut set deeply in the opposite bank of a
ravine, through which water was flowing. To reach the hut the child
scaled the deep gorge and clambered up the other side.

The shanty was dark and Tessibel stood long looking intently at it. Over
the top, which was covered with tar paper, scraped the branches of a
large tree--the wind was dashing a dead vine mournfully against a broken
window. Although on friendly terms with Mother Moll, Tess had always
stood in awe of her, but the squatter girl had infinite confidence in
the future events foretold by the witch. To-night she must see the
woman--must ask her news of Daddy Skinner from the fortune pot. The dead
fish hanging upon the slender arm were to propitiate the witch's anger
for being dragged from her bed in the night.

Tess stepped shivering to the door and knocked. Receiving no answer, she
sent another pealing sound through the howling wind, for she knew Mother
Moll was there.

Suddenly a voice came from within.

"What in the devil's name do ye want here, at this time of the
darkness?"

"It air Tess, Ma Moll. I wants yer fortune pot."

"Go home and come agin to-morry."

"Won't," Tess sent back defiantly, "air goin' to see ye to-night. I air
goin' to give ye somethin' for yer luck pot."

A scramble, a hurrying sound from within, and the door was dragged open.
Tess stepped into the dark room,--the whizzing of insects overhead
coming dimly to her through the rocking of the shanty. One broad-winged
clammy night bat whirled close to her, but was gone before she could put
up her hand.

"It air a bad night that brought the brat out to me, so it air," growled
the hag, "be it the headless man from Hayte's place what air been
hauntin' ye, or the Indian squaw with her burnt brat?"

She was feeling about for a match as she croaked out her words. Tess did
not answer, but waited until Mother Moll lighted a candle and then
dropped her load upon the floor.

"They air for the luck-pot, I says, Ma Moll," said she, opening the bag,
and displaying the eels, "I comes to know what air in it for me."

"Air they dead eels what you found on the shore," asked the hag
suspiciously, "Maybe them ain't fresh ones."

"I killed them myself but a time ago," responded Tess. "It hurts them to
lug them livin' out of the water, but they fills your pot for many a
mess."

It was a tempting wage for the hag. She blew the dying grate embers into
a blaze over which she hung a small iron pot. The bats had ceased the
infernal flapping of their grotesque wings, and were clinging trembling
to the rafters above. Tess could mark them through the shadows, as one
by one she slowly counted them.

Ma Moll was crooning over the kettle. She was a woman older than any
one even dared guess. With a cackling laugh she always answered
questions as to her age with the assertion that she was "nigh on to two
hundred and a deal more than that," and no one could contradict her, for
she was old when Orn Skinner was a small boy.

Tess, taking her eyes from the hanging bats, allowed them to rest upon
the hag. The small dwarfed figure was not so tall as her own and the
rounded shoulders, drawn down by great age, held a head grizzled and
shriveled. A few tufts of gray hair hung over the ragged wrapper-like
garment which covered the thin body. Great bunches stood out on the bare
feet, while the long fingers stirring the liquid in the pot, were
knuckled high on each hand.

"Air it the headless man what I spoke of," Moll asked again peering into
the pot, "no--it ain't that ... it air somethin' worse than that."

"Worse than that," echoed Tess coming forward, and sinking down upon her
knees beside the hag.

"It air worse than the squaw and her burnt brat ... Aye, worse--"

"Worse--than--what?" faltered Tess, with a sob in her throat.

"It air the shadder of a rope--"

Here the hag moved closer to the bubbling kettle while the red-brown
head pushed nearer and nearer.

"And there air a loop in the end," went on Mother Moll.

Tessibel caught her breath. It was the black place--the rope of the
Canadian Indian. The awfulness--the loneliness of her despair made her
whimper brokenly behind a tattered sleeve. The hag was muttering her
incantations and did not heed the girl.

"The rope air a long 'un and a stout 'un," Ma Moll's voice had raised to
a shrill cry as she described the instrument of death. Tessibel's head
was now close to the hag's. Her wild terror-stricken eyes following the
stick as it stirred the contents of the pot.

"Air the loop around a neck, and air there humps under the head what's a
hangin'?"

She quivered as she spoke. The thin body of the hag crept nearer to the
child--the gray straggling locks mingling with the copper curls, and the
youthful shoulders of the fishermaid contrasting strongly with those of
the bent old woman.

The hag was searching for the humps--her wild old eyes glaring into the
seething mess. A trembling bat loosened its hold upon the rafters above
and blinded by the light of the candle, thrashed its zig-zag course
about the shanty, banging first the window, then the door, and causing
both watchers to lift their heads. They saw him as he fell fluttering to
the floor, lifting his body pantingly up and down.

Again they gazed into the pot, and as one thin hand held the whirling
stick the hag's bony finger pointed mysteriously to the shadow marking
the future.

"Be there humps," persisted Tess, "big round humps standin' out as how
the hills stand by the lake?"

The hag replied in a hoarse whisper:

"There be no humps, but there air a dead man."

So thoroughly did Tess believe in the witch's words that she sank back
with a cry, upon her wet red feet.

"It ain't daddy," she breathed slowly, hardly daring to utter the name.

"There be no humps," repeated Ma Moll. "There air a storm and a dead
man, but his face ain't a showin'. There air another dead one on the
shore. He ain't the same kind of one, he air--"

"A gamekeeper," filled in Tess.

The witch wobbled her head in assent, as Tessibel leaned over to follow
the long finger defining the shadow.

"There air a shanty," Mother Moll went on, "a child alone, and dead
things layin' about and there air a--a--"

The two heads were now bent directly over the pot. Tess caught her
breath in a sob. Was Daddy Skinner coming back to the shanty? The dragon
blood sputtered, boiling higher and higher, over the heat of the fire,
as the witch dug it upward from the bottom of the kettle.

"A prison cell and a man," ended Moll.

"Be there humps?" gasped Tess.

An acquiescent nod came from the gray-grizzled head. Tessibel wound her
fingers about the arm-bone of the hag.

"Air there a cross with a Christ hangin' on it?"

The witch looked deeper into the dark mixture, her eyes squinting to
narrow slits, and Tess continued:

"A hangin' Christ that air hurt, and be there thorns a-diggin' in Him?"

Deeper and deeper into the sizzling pot stared the faded blue eyes of
the hag, the dark wide-spread ones of the girl following every movement
of Ma Moll's hand.

"Aye, there air a cross for ye, brat, to carry on yer back--"

"Air there no Christ a bearin' one for Daddy?"

Suddenly the door burst open, and the raging wind flickered out the
candle. It had been so sudden that Tess screamed, and the witch muttered
a curse. The rain tore its way through the small dirty room; the bats
loosened their hold upon the wooden rafters and circled the darkness,
first into the open, then into the room--against and away from
Tessibel's face, until the girl broke into wild weeping.

Ma Moll had failed to find the cross. The wind forcing the door bespoke
evil for Daddy. Without the student's Christ how could she save him?

"Go home, brat," ordered the hag. "Go home, there air a cross with a
Christ hangin' to it, and there were a dead man without humps."

Out into the rain the sound of the hag's words ringing in her ears, the
whizzing bats for the first time filling her with a strange mysterious
fear, Tessibel went. She turned into the dark forest of which she was
not afraid, and crossing the gorges again, sought the upper hill which
led to the tracks.




CHAPTER VIII


Elias Graves was pastor of one of the largest churches in Ithaca. His
family consisted of his wife, his son Frederick, and his daughter Teola,
a girl of sixteen, and little Babe, the spoiled pet of the family.
Besides a beautiful town rectory, he owned the lake farm and held the
title to the small piece of property upon which Orn Skinner squatted.
That the hut and its filth injured his own magnificent cottage no one
denied.

It was true he only spent ten or twelve weeks of the summer in the lake
house, but every man desired his own. For several years there had been a
continual fight between the pastor and the fisherman--Orn Skinner
answering the minister with the squatter law of the state which gave him
the use of the few feet of ground upon which his shanty stood.

Still the Dominie insisted that some day he would rid his summer home of
the pest and the time had come.

After leaving Tessibel he walked up the long lane leaning on the arm of
his son, sputtering against his enemies.

"The very idea of that malicious brat jumping upon me as she did. She
ought to have a sound whipping."

Frederick shivered slightly. His heart was full of sympathy for the
primitive girl who had so devotedly loved her toad.

"We would be rid of the whole family if we could get that girl away,"
went on his father, "then I could file a request to take what belongs to
me. Hall said only to-night that he would like to see all the squatters
gone. We've decided to make a move."

Frederick tried to make a small complaint, but the minister commanded
him to silence.

"Get rid of them I will, do you hear?" he shouted, "they have no moral
right there whatever the law says. Get rid of them, I will."

When the Dominie reiterated strongly his whole family remained silent,
and this time Frederick dared pass no remark. He wondered if it were not
for just such people as the Skinners that the Christ had suffered. He
felt an incentive rising in his heart to seek guidance from the Book,
for although Frederick Graves greatly reverenced his father he would not
give up his own opinions without a struggle.

"I've got this Skinner just where I want him after all these years,"
hurled forth the minister, as they passed the pear orchard, and then
added:

"But I don't understand how you came to be in the hut."

"I heard the girl crying," replied Frederick curtly.

"I missed you when we left Hall's," explained the Dominie. "Charlie
called me back to ask about the plans for the new church, and if I had
not whistled just when I did, you might have been in that hut still, I
suppose."

Frederick found himself wishing that his father had not whistled, his
mind going back to the girl in the shanty, whom he had left with her
living grief--and her dead.

He saw his sister, Teola, standing on the broad porch waiting for them.
The girl scented something unusual in the angry tones of her father's
voice. She followed Frederick alone into the library which looked out
upon Tessibel's hut.

"What's the matter?"

Frederick shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

"Nothing much."

The brother and sister had grown into a confidential friendship during
the past two years. Teola's face dropped as she heard Frederick's
halting answer.

"I know better," she retorted decidedly. "You have been having words
with father."

"No, not words," replied the boy, "but you see father thinks that no one
can have any ideas but himself. It sort of makes me tired, for sometimes
I know when a thing is right or wrong."

"What was the matter?" insisted Teola once more.

"The Skinners," replied Frederick slowly.

"You mean the squatters?"

"Yes."

"Aren't they alright where they are?" hesitated Teola.

"Skinner killed the gamekeeper to-night, and the girl is alone in the
shanty. Father doesn't seem to realize that they have souls to be saved
as well as the rest of the world."

Teola thought an instant before answering.

"They are so dirty," she said at last.

"That's true," Frederick reflected, "but nevertheless they are human."

"Were you in the hut?"

"Yes, with father."

"Whew! What did he say?"

The question was answered by loud words from the minister talking to
his wife in the dining room.

"I tell you," said his voice, ringing out so that the two listeners
could hear, "those squatters have got to go. I'm not the only one who
thinks that way. If they had the instincts of decency I wouldn't say a
word, but they haven't. I say it's time to make a move."

"You know," continued the minister, "that their hut is in direct line
with our view. There's no buying them off ... I've tried that. Now that
Skinner is arrested it won't be hard to frighten the girl away, for she
can't stay there alone."

"I'm not so sure," mused Mrs. Graves; "those people are not easily
frightened."

"She's afraid of me," shouted the Dominie, "and she will be more so
before I get through with her and her father. If Skinner is hanged, she
shan't stay there."

Later there was a long discussion between the father and son upon the
rights of squatters, which ended in Frederick's going to bed before it
was half finished more disgusted and unhappy than he had ever been
before. He looked out upon the lake. The wind was still rolling the
water into white crested waves, and his eyes could scarcely outline the
small hut under the willow tree. Into the boy's life something had
come--a new something he could not explain, while out of it another
something as hard to define had gone forever.

       *       *       *       *       *

Two jack rabbits perched on the tracks above the fodder lot of Minister
Graves lifted their long ears and listened. Human steps at this time of
night were out of the ordinary. The dog at Kennedy's farm beyond the
tracks heard them, too, and bayed loudly. Then as they grew more
distinct he bounded toward the fence, capering madly about, to scent the
intruder. It was but a forlorn little figure, but Pete, the brindle
bull, lifting his voice in a pleased howl, crouched close to the fence
as a small hand came through to pet him.

"It air only Tess," said a voice in which tears had gathered. "Ye air
glad to see Tess, ain't ye?... Tess air glad to see ye, too ...
Frederick and Daddy air gone and I must be goin'."

Tessibel placed her face down near the big dog and he shoved out his
long red tongue, touching her with delight. The girl hugged the large
head with an admonishing appeal that Pete must go back to his
kennel--and stepped again to the track--that long, black winding road
which she must travel before reaching her destination.

It was raining again, the water falling in steady drops upon the bare
head. Frequently the girl wiped the water from her face with a torn
calico skirt. Once she sat down and gathered her feet under her wet
dress to stop their stinging pain--and here alone under the dark sky,
Tessibel offered up her first balanced prayer, for had not Frederick
said that God would save Daddy Skinner.

"He do say," and she lifted her eyes upward with a simultaneous wipe at
her face, "that there air a God who'll help my Daddy ... I wants to find
my Daddy ... for a minute ... a little minute ... be it pleasin' to ye,
Goddy?"

Tessibel always put "dy" to Dad to make it more effective--and it was
with the same sweet, serious voice, with which she would have pleaded
with her own father, that she made familiar with the majesty of heaven.
She could make no distinction between Daddy Skinner and Jehovah. Both to
her were the reigning powers of the earth. Daddy she had always known,
but the other--Frederick had said it was good to pray. She rose
stumbling, and at three o'clock in the morning entered the city of
Ithaca, walking up State street drabbled and thoroughly wet. She knew
the streets that led to the city jail, for many a time when selling
greens and berries had she gone steathily to the gray stone building and
examined the barred windows.

She crossed Dewitt park, and passed by the churches which surrounded the
jail. Around and around the ivy-covered stone structure wandered the
rain-soaked, barefooted girl. She could not distinguish one ray of
light at first in any of the windows.... Suddenly she stopped and took a
long breath. Up near the roof line a faint light flickered ... some one
was moving to and fro. Tessibel could distinguish a rounded shadow on
the ceiling of the cell, and tears choked her, as she saw cast upon the
wall the shadowy outline of a large humpbacked form. It was Daddy--Daddy
Skinner, and Tessibel backed from the building, straining her eyes to
get a better view of him. Now the image was in sight, again it
disappeared--Daddy was walking up and down, but he did not come near
enough to the window for her to see his face.

Seven times she counted Daddy's rounded shadow on the wall, and seven
times it faded. The eighth--a grizzled head cast its outline distinctly
across the bars.

"Daddy--aw--Daddy Skinner."

It was only a loving name breathed by a troubled child, but it was
caught in its upward flight by the father's ear above. Tess saw the
pictured humps pause, and as she whispered the name again, Daddy Skinner
came to the iron lattice. She could discern her father plainly through
the rain and held her arms up toward him.

"It air lonely in the shanty, in the ... shanty ... without ye, Daddy,"
she breathed, "and Tessibel ... air sorry ... for all her badness. Come
home, Daddy ... dear, good Daddy ... and Tess--"

She stopped, for a sight strange and unusual fell upon her. Daddy
Skinner was looking down, clinging to the bars mightily, his under lip
shaking, his dark teeth chattering together--the grizzled head making a
sharp picture of misery in the barred window. Emotion in her father was
new to Tess. A little frightened cry fell from her lips and she clutched
hurriedly at the thick creeping ivy which clung to the old gray stone
building.

"I air comin', Daddy Skinner," she cried. "I air comin'."

She followed the main body of the ivy on its upward growth, slipping and
sliding on the wet creeper as she made her perilous ascent. Daddy
Skinner was near the roof and it took Tessibel many torturing minutes to
reach him. He knew she was coming by the continual dragging at the ivy,
but he dared not speak, for the guard walked outside his door in the
hall, and the sound of a voice would bring danger to Tess. Once he
strained his face to the bars--saw her climbing frantically, and the
sight made him dizzy. He could only wait--wait the interminable time
until the red-brown head appeared and the wide eyes stared into his.
Skinner quietly drew his child to the stone sill and placed his fingers
over her lips to enjoin silence. Tess understood and even drew softer
breaths, holding tightly to the beloved hands.

"I comed for kisses on the bill, Daddy," she breathed. "Tess ... air
lonely without ye."

The livid, shaking lips met the quivering mouth through the iron rods. A
long, long kiss, such as Tess had wanted quieted her suffering a little.
It was the same old Daddy whom she was going to save by praying. She had
asked to see him only a minute, and the student's God had granted her
prayer.

She whispered again, shivering and shaking with the cold.

"Did ye kill the gamekeeper, Daddy?"

The gray head shook the answer, "no."

"If ye did ye didn't mean to, did ye?"

The two negative replies made Tessibel's heart bound. It would be easier
for God to help him if he had not committed a crime, and for no instant
did she doubt his word. She kissed him again passionately, clinging to
his lips with all the young growing emotion in her body.

The squatter clung desperately to the body of his child. He could not
let her go, fearing she would fall to the hard stones below, but he knew
that she stood in danger of being discovered and dared not detain her.

"Kin ye get down again?" he whispered.

"Yep, Daddy Skinner, and ye ain't goin' to hang, 'cause some one what
can, air goin' to help ye."

"Who air he?"

"God ... up there!" and Tessibel motioned with her hand toward the dark
sky. "He says as how He helps folks like us ... that a cross was beared
for us ... and I says to Him to-night, and I says every day till ye
come back to the shanty ... that He lets ye free, Daddy.... I asks the
sheriff to-morrow if I can come afternoons to see ye. And, Daddy, I
holds the shanty till ye come home."

He kissed her small pinched face again and again--and took his arms
away. Tess slipped down the creeper and when she reached the ground
called softly:

"I air here, Daddy Skinner."

She saw him pressing against the bars, his lips shaking and his eyes
closely shut as if he were stumblingly offering a prayer for the child
of his fisherman soul.




CHAPTER IX


The fraternities of Cornell University gave home and social comforts to
students, rich and popular enough to be invited to join them. Each
fraternity had its own spacious house, with its staff of servants, where
the members lived during the college year.

Every first-year man had the ambition to join one, which if he attained
assured him a luxurious home during the four years he spent in Ithaca.

One evening, three weeks after Tessibel's secret visit to her father in
the city jail, twenty fraternities were preparing all the practical
jokes which boyish minds could concoct, with which to initiate their new
candidates to full membership. Five new men were to join the "Cranium"
fraternity. The house of this society stood high upon the eastern hill
above the lake and overlooked the forest-mantled town. The first story
of the building contained the smoking, dining, billiard and two drawing
rooms. Above were sleeping chambers and private studies for the
students, and annexed to the house proper was a small stone structure
built purposely for the initiation of the new members.

On this night all interest was centered upon the annex where Frederick
Graves, Dan Jordan, Billy Dillon, Oscar Brown and Jimmy Preston were to
be taken through the "stunts."

In the afternoon the five young men had been locked in one of the
student's rooms, and told that they would receive their dinner during
the proceedings that evening. The gravity which had settled upon the
upper classmen frightened the three smaller candidates, for Billy, Oscar
and Jimmy were miniatures in size compared to Dan Jordan and Frederick
Graves.

"Do you think they are going to hurt us," asked Billy Dillon, turning to
the two larger students. "I don't want to be hurt--I like the thought of
being a fraternity man, but I don't want to go through any business that
will injure me."

"Neither do I," put in Oscar Brown. "I promised my mother--"

"It won't be well with you fellows if those chaps downstairs hear you
talking that way," cautioned Jordan, "besides the initiation is only
fun, and any of us are willing to stand jokes."

After a three-hour wait, a group of sophomores, and the freshmen's
tormentors--appeared upon the scene and ordered the candidates to follow
them into the dreaded annex. In this "torture chamber" the older
members, juniors and seniors, seated on benches placed around the wall,
were waiting gravely the arrival of their victims.

The honors of the occasion had been given into the hands of the
sophomores, and as they trailed in followed by the quaking applicants, a
hush fell over the expectant members of the society.

The five freshmen were ordered to stand in a row, and Richard Hall, the
spokesman of the second-year class, came forward, holding up one hand in
mock reverence.

"Gentlemen," he began, "I first christen you all in the name of the
'Cranium' Fraternity. I give you, Dillon, the name of 'Swipes.' You,
Brown, shall be dubbed 'Shorts'--here he hesitated an instant, perusing
a slip of paper which lay on the table beside him--Preston, you may add
another 'S' to make a trio--your name shall be 'Spuddy.'"

Hall allowed his eyes to gaze reflectively upon Dan Jordan.

"To a big fellow like you, Jordan," he resumed, "I give 'Captain.'" His
voice dropped as if he had either overlooked or forgotten Frederick, and
the young fellow waited expectantly.

Suddenly Hall flashed him a glance, then dropped his eyes with twitching
lips.

"'Parson' is good enough for you, Graves."

Sweeping the five candidates with his searching gaze, he took up the
speech again--

"If at any time your fraternity brothers desire to call you by your new
names and you refuse to answer, you shall receive the punishment which
goes with disobedience."

"Gentlemen," he said again, dismissing the last subject with a wave of
his hand, "it gives us great pleasure to receive you into this
fraternity, but before we can give you full membership it is necessary
for us to go through a few more formalities."

Hall's eye fell in hesitation upon the ponderous form of Dan Jordan.

"You will all no doubt soon see the value of prompt obedience," his
voice rang out, and a smile touched each corner of his lips, but faded
instantly.

The three little freshmen moved uneasily--Hall, with a touch of irony in
his tones, directed the rest of his instructions to them.

"We have decided," resumed the speaker, "to initiate you fellows all at
one time."

Oscar Brown sighed in relief. "Misery loves company," and if the society
had any indignities to bestow, he would not be alone.

"We have found it necessary in times past," Hall took up again with a
tragic tone in his voice, "to use discipline upon such occasions as
this, and if by chance an incoming member becomes obstreperous, we
employ a friend to help us--he holds an honored position in our
fraternity ... Mr. Manchester, introduce 'Mazuka.'"

The sophomore thus adjured, stepped nimbly to the corner, and lifting
from a hook a long vicious-looking carpet beater, brought it toward
Hall.

"Handle him with reverence," shouted the spokesman, taking it carefully
in his hands and turning it over with a benign smile. "Many a time has
'Mazuka' done good service for this frat! You will understand," the
freshmen heard him say, "that an indecorous smile on any of your faces
will immediately call for three strokes from 'Mazuka,'" and he waved the
carpet beater threateningly, "and for disobedience you will get five. We
will now proceed to business. 'Captain' Jordan and 'Parson' Graves,
please step forward ... Blindfold the eyes of those two, Frank," Hall
ended, addressing one of his classmates near him.

He turned to a group of his companions--and after whispering with them,
came back saying aloud--"that's a good one to begin with."

Directing his eyes upon Jordan, he said:

"Down upon the floor and scramble like an egg, Captain."

A titter came from Billy Dillon.

"Duck that fresh chicken for laughing," shouted Hall, "and give him
three strokes of the 'Mazuka.'"

A sophomore brought a pail of cold water, and two other students,
grasping the little fellow, immersed his curly head in it. They then
stood him on his feet and laid the carpet beater three times across his
back. Billy almost wished he had not chosen the fraternity life, but the
others were suffering with him, which made it easier than if he had been
alone.

Meanwhile Dan Jordan was industriously trying to imitate a cooking egg.

"Scramble, Captain, scramble," cried a sophomore, prodding Jordan with a
stick.

"Cook the 'Parson,' too," shouted some one, and Frederick was ordered to
follow the movements of his friend.

A faint flush mounted to the broad brow of the minister's son and he
hesitated.

"Bring the 'Mazuka,'" commanded Hall, and the eager sophomore rushed up
with the persuader.

"Scramble, you," he roared, waving the carpet beater dangerously near
Frederick's head, and down beside his strapping friend dropped the
dignified Frederick--two more long legs, and two more heavy arms were
wiggling over the floor.

"Those eggs are burning, give them some grease," suggested a senior from
his seat near the wall.

An agile, willing sophomore snatched a bucket of water and emptied its
contents over the two floundering giants. As the icy bath submerged the
freshmen, Dan Jordan, sputtering and gasping, bounded to his feet.

"Five strokes of the 'Mazuka' for the 'Captain,'" shouted the delighted
Manchester waving the carpet beater, "he got up without permission."

Three students held Jordan fast and the little sophomore, dancing with
glee, belabored the huge half "scrambled egg," each blow resounding
through the room.

"There! I guess that will hold him a while," chuckled the chastiser,
putting the carpet beater under his arm, his face reflecting the
pleasure of well-performed duty.

Frederick, wet and looking very bored, was still flopping about the
floor, and after passing a few more remarks about rotten eggs and
undignified positions, the sophomores allowed him to stand up.

"Now put the wet booby in the corner," ordered Hall, and Frederick was
accordingly led away.

Oscar Brown and Jimmy Preston, a little pale after witnessing Dan
Jordan's punishment, were then told to come forward. Both trembled
perceptibly as they were blindfolded by a sophomore and commanded to lie
upon their backs upon the floor.

"You fellows are going to get that dinner we promised you now," he said,
stooping over the frightened prostrate students, and giving the bandages
a last tightening pull; "the first course consists of something you are
sure to like, and we guarantee them to be absolutely fresh. Bring the
supper in, for these kids are hungry!"

Some one brought a dish and the two boys could plainly hear the rattle
of the cover as it came off.

"Open your mouths," came the next command.

Oscar Brown timidly opened his lips and waited, but Jimmy Preston,
thinking the joke had gone far enough, obstinately refused to open his
lips.

Bang! came the carpet beater over the side of his leg, and his mouth
flew open like a trapdoor.

"That's just a little reminder for you to do as you are told, Spuddy,"
the wielder of the "Mazuka" laughed.

"Here's the dinner, boys," cried Hall, "and I bet you can't imagine what
we've brought you.... Do you know what that is, 'Shorts'?"

Brown shivered, for something snake-like and cold was drawn across his
cheek.

"It's an angle worm," continued the speaker, "and you're going to eat
it.... Don't be afraid, 'Spuddy,' you needn't wiggle, you are going to
have one, too," he added the last part of the sentence, seeing a shudder
pass over the form of the other blindfolded boy.

"Keep your mouths wide open," shouted a senior.

Simultaneously the two boys felt the promised but undesirable dinner
drop into their mouths. With a groan Oscar Brown rolled over on his side
and allowed his portion to fall slowly out. But Jimmy Preston, amid
howls of joy from the onlookers, jumped to his feet and tore the bandage
from his eyes.

"No fraternity for me," he yelled. "I've never heard of such a dirty
trick. If you fellows--"

His disgusted gaze fell upon the plate held by a sophomore convulsed
with laughter. Jimmy rubbed his eyes, blinked, and looked again--blank
astonishment taking the place of his anger. In the dish were only a few
strings of cold cooked macaroni.

"Golly! What a fool I am," and Jimmy glanced about upon the grinning
faces with a sheepish air.

"That's what you are alright," said Manchester, trying to be serious and
securing a better grip upon the carpet beater. "Who said you could take
that bandage off. That will cost you five strokes of the 'Mazuka.' ...
Here, fellows, hold him on his stomach over that chair, so that I can
get in some of my fine strokes.... One ... two ... three ... four ...
five ..."

Jimmy was jerked to his feet, the injured expression upon his sorrowful
face plainly showing Manchester that his strokes had been telling ones.

"There! We're through with you for to-night, 'Spuddy,' old boy," said
Manchester, proudly feeling his biceps. "Go sit down ... if you can,"
and Jimmy limped away with a muttered "thank heaven."

During a conference in undertones, amid giggling and snickering, Richard
unfolded a new plan. Then he said in a loud voice,

"One of you fellows see if the surgeon is here yet. And hurry back."

Billy Dillon who had remained in trembling silence during the
proceedings, received his bandage without a complaint, although his face
was ashy pale, and his knees shook beneath him as Hall approached.

What did they want a doctor for? They surely wouldn't do--anything bad
enough to need a surgeon. Thoughts like these went racing through his
frightened mind, the sophomore leading him in terrifying darkness to a
chair near by. Silence fell upon the room, and all that Billy could hear
was his own excited breathing, made louder by the explosive beats of his
heart.

"Swipes," he heard Hall say, "we've decided that we can't stand that
pretty face of yours around, but as we like you and don't want to send
you away, we will change the expression on it. A gash on each of those
rosy cheeks will alter your whole appearance, so much, that not one of
your lady friends will ever recognize you again. In after days, when you
grow to be a man, you will thank us for this. Frank, tell Dr. Wallace to
come in."

A pause ... and Billy heard the door open and close, and someone coming
toward him, the person smelling strongly of drugs.

"Is this the unfortunate young man," asked a strange, but not altogether
unfamiliar voice.

"Yes," Billy heard Hall answer in heartbroken tones, "and please,
doctor, do the best you can for him."

"Oh, we'll fix him alright in just about a minute," responded the
strange voice. "Mr. Hall, will you please hold his arms, for when
patients are excited they sometimes forget themselves, and ... now ...
my instruments, please."

Billy's arms were held tightly behind him, and for a moment he heard
nothing--then came to his ears the sound of a box being unclasped
and--horror of horrors--the rattle of surgical instruments.

Would they dare cut his face? Why his father would--

Billy felt the cold blade of the knife touch his flesh, and hot blood
run down to his chin.

Upon this he became possessed by the strength of a giant. Jerking his
hands loose he struck out with all his might, his fist hitting something
with the force of a kicking donkey. There was a sound of some one
falling and a roar of laughter went up from the students as Billy was
grasped by what seemed a thousand hands. The bandage was snatched from
his eyes and he looked upon a sorry sight. Manchester, the expert
wielder of the Mazuka, had failed as a surgeon. He lay a few feet away
amid pieces of broken ice, which he had pretended was a surgical
knife--his coat bespotted with hot milk which represented poor Billy's
blood, and his left hand clasped tightly over a swollen eye.

"What hit me?" gasped the fictitious Dr. Wallace.

"What hit Manchester, fellows?" one of the seniors managed to howl out
to the convulsed fraternity members.

"I believe that rascally freshman did it," exclaimed Manchester
excitedly, "bring me the 'Mazuka,' and I'll put a bunch on him that
never will come off."

"Gee Whiz! Look at his eye," some one called out.

This brought Manchester to a standstill.

"What's the matter with it," he groaned, putting his hand again to his
face, "is it gone?"

The lids were puffed shut, and were rapidly darkening. Richard Hall,
laughing uproariously, held a pocket mirror for the young sophomore to
peep into. After a moment's contemplation of his bruised face,
Manchester came forth in a hoarse whisper,

"That freshman's got to die--If I only ... had an ax," and his one eye
gazed wildly around in search of a weapon.

"Come, come, Teddy Manchester," soothed a tall senior, "we'll arrange
with the freshman alright. Don't work yourself into unnecessary
excitement."

"And he shall use all his spending money for your tobacco, Teddy, for
the entire year," cajoled Hall, "and black your boots and brush your
clothes, into the bargain, and besides you will get a chance to get even
at the Freshmen's Banquet," he whispered.

"Gentlemen," he concluded, turning with a winning smile upon the
assembled society, "we have five new members in the 'Cranium'
Fraternity."




CHAPTER X


Minister Graves' city home, the Rectory, was a magnificent house,
covered with a thick growth of ivy; one bay window ornamenting it on the
west, another looking on the street.

The first evening in November, the family was seated about the table,
the minister reading the evening paper. "Babe" was arguing with her
mother that all little girls should be allowed to roller skate upon the
pavement; that "there wasn't a bit of danger in it."

Frederick was silently eating his dinner--Teola following his example.
Suddenly the minister ejaculated:

"Ah, that's good."

"What's good, father?" inquired Mrs. Graves.

"Skinner is brought to trial to-morrow. The paper says there isn't the
slightest hope for him to escape. And listen to this:

"Of all the happenings in the annals of the Ithaca courts the following
is the most extraordinary. Orn Skinner, the squatter, who is to be tried
this week for the murder of Emery Stebbins, the game warden, is the
father of a girl some fifteen years old. The day after his incarceration
the girl presented herself at the office of the sheriff, asking
permission to see her father. The sheriff thought wiser not and refused
the request. But the night before last the girl was discovered
ascending, like a squirrel, the thick growth of ivy that covers the
stone structure of the jail. For nearly a month she has been tramping
the Lehigh Valley railroad tracks after dark, reaching the jail at
midnight, and holding converse with her father on the stone sill of his
cell window, two stories above the ground. The girl was closely
questioned but refused to answer, probably fearing the consequences of
visiting a prisoner without the consent of the sheriff. Skinner has been
removed to an inner cell, the authorities fearing some plan of escape.
The girl is very pretty, with long red hair, and brown eyes, and those
who have seen her say that she is like a frightened rabbit, refusing to
talk with any, save a few of her kind."

The Dominie grunted, as he finished reading.

"I should think they would remove him to an inner cell," said he. "Such
goings on! The girl ought to have a taste of the rawhide."

"Maybe she loves her father and wanted to see him," ventured Babe, who
had no reverence for paternal opinions.

"Love, love," retorted the Dominie, "all the love those people have in
their lives you could put in a nutshell."

"Her father's trial comes up to-morrow--I wonder if they will allow the
girl to attend."

This was from Frederick--he had not seen Tessibel since the night he had
told her how to help her father. His face gathered a crimson shade as he
remembered that he had promised her that he, too, would pray for her
Daddy. The sympathy he had felt in his heart, throbbed again as he
thought of her lonely grief--and the dead toad. He would keep his
promise to Tess--pray that something might come into her life if
somebody went out.

"Mother," said Teola, changing the subject abruptly, "why can't we have
a toffy pull. I want one so badly."

"It's such a messy thing," sighed Mrs. Graves, looking about upon the
tidy home, "and not one of you young people can keep your sticky hands
from the curtains and furniture. But I suppose, if you will have it,
nothing I can say will alter it. But remember this: I won't have those
boys and girls tramping through my house and mussing up everything."

As they rose from the table Teola followed her brother into the hall.

"Frederick, if I arrange the toffy pull, do you suppose Mr. Jordan would
come?"

She dropped her eyes--the blood curling to the edge of the tiny ringlets
that clung to her forehead. Her brother gave a low laugh.

"He would be only too pleased, Sis, and he is a capital chap. He's a
great favorite at the frat with all the boys. Shall I invite him?"

"Yes ... for day after to-morrow evening. Will that suit you?"

"Let me see," reflected Frederick, "we are having a meeting at the
fraternity, but we might come down afterward, unless we are kept too
late."

"Don't let them keep you," pleaded Teola, flashing her brilliant eyes
into Frederick's face, "you and Mr. Jordan have influence enough to get
away, even if you are freshmen."

The student stooped and kissed his sister fondly.

"I'll arrange it to suit you, Sister ... I want to go to the Skinner
trial to-morrow. I suppose father will go, too?"

"Everybody will be there," rejoined Teola. "I wonder if his daughter
will be permitted to see him after she has been discovered breaking the
law."

This time it was Frederick who flushed--it suddenly dawned upon him that
he was going to the court simply to see the squatter girl again. He
explained his embarrassment by exclaiming:

"Poor little soul! She is the loneliest child in the world. I wish we
could do something for her!"

"Father wouldn't let us," put in Teola in dismay; "then, too, I don't
know what we could do for a squatter."

"Neither do I, that's the problem," finished Frederick, and after he was
gone Teola mused long with Dan Jordan in her mind.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the break of the first day of the Skinner trial, smoke could be seen
curling up from the chimney of Tessibel's hut. A candle stood in the
window, flickering its smoky flame toward the light streaks in the east.
From the lighthouse to the ragged rocks the lake was covered with the
ice and snow of an early winter. Beyond, the little waves curled up and
washed over the frozen masses, adhering here and there, making an icy
fringe along the edge. Flocks of wild ducks fluttered close to the lake
surface, filling the morning air with discordant quacking.

Tessibel had not forgotten that her father was to be brought that day
before his accusers,--she had made elaborate preparations for the
reception of her dear one, when he should be free to return to her. She
would stay in the shanty during the trial--and pray.

Daddy was playing a part in a most agonizing drama--he and the student
and herself were the principals--while a few others, their enemies, made
the background.

... When the curtain fell Tessibel would bring "Daddy" home to the
hut--and it was for this that she was preparing.

The bed had been dragged from the wall, and the squatter girl was
sweeping out the dust of ages which settled again upon the coats and
among the webby meshes of the net now dry and shrunken from disuse. One
leg was missing from the stove, but three red bricks shoved under the
side did the work of the broken part; the ancient frying pan with
patches of grease upon it suspended itself from a newly driven nail in
the wall.

Tess had learned many things since her father's imprisonment--had
learned that a girl of fifteen couldn't run barefooted in the open with
impunity. She had found a pair of Daddy's old cast-off boots, tied rags
about her feet, and clambered into them.

How like a woman she felt with covered legs! True, the water gushed in
through the holes that Daddy had cut in the soles on the rocks, but the
tops were whole--and Tess looked upon them with pride.

When the daylight flooded the cabin Tess blew out the candle and viewed
her work with delight. How pleased Daddy would be--after this she would
be a model housekeeper. He should sleep in the morning until she had
prepared his breakfast, and her fingers would fly in the summer,
gathering the berries and fruit to make more money so that he should
not run risks with the netting!

That first day of waiting seemed interminably long, but Tess spent it
happily, for ever vividly into her mind came the words of Frederick the
student--that God would hear, and answer.

Day by day her faith in the efficacy of her petitions had grown upon
her. In spite of the fact that she had been caught by Daddy's enemies in
her nightly scrambles up the ivy at the jail, God had answered in
letting her see her father so many times at the end of her midnight
walks.

       *       *       *       *       *

Three men of squatter's row staggered through the storm up the Lehigh
Valley tracks. They passed the line of huts, making an occasional
comment upon the inhabitants of some lighted shanty.

It was the evening of the second of November, the first day of Orn
Skinner's trial. The squatters had turned out in great numbers to see
how the humped prisoner looked before his condemnation, for all believed
that the fisherman would hang. It would be establishing a new precedent
if Skinner were acquitted--and Ithaca never established new precedents
with squatters.

So mused the men as they sullenly toiled toward home, each satisfied in
his heart that, if Skinner went the way of others from the row, it would
be but another act of revenge upon the part of the townspeople, for had
not one and every witness save Elias Graves testified that day to the
good character of the accused man?

The headlight of a locomotive sent them to the side track.

"Orn's face were yaller'n saffron, wern't it, when Minister Graves said
as how he were a cussed pap of a cusseder gal," said Ezy Longman to Jake
Brewer and Ben Letts.

"He were that mad," agreed Letts, "that the humps on his back just riz
up and down--he were that mad he were."

"But it were screechin' funny when the jedge made the parson speak out
what Tess done," laughed Jake Brewer.

"You bet," assented Ezry Longman. "But why weren't she there to-day?"

"Don't know," answered Jake. "She were home, I guess. She 'lows as how
her Daddy comes home to-morry ... I 'lows as how he don't."

"I 'lows it, too," grunted Ben Letts.

They walked on in silence for some time, the wind crooning its endless
tune through the telegraph wires. As they passed Kennedy's, Pete, the
brindle bulldog, howled in rage at not being able to attack the
squatters. The dog snapped viciously at all strangers--and more than
this would he have done if he had had an opportunity to reach Ben Letts
and Ezra Longman. These men had spared neither stones nor sticks, in
times past, to arouse the dog's ire; and Pete never forgot an enemy.

At the end of the lane, the candle in Skinner's window flickered them an
invitation to stop. Tessibel answered their knock and embarrassedly
offered each a chair as the door closed behind them.

"It ain't ended?" she faltered with a hasty glance at the three stolid
faces, the post of Daddy's bed supporting the supple young form.

"To-morry," replied Jake Brewer.

Ben Letts moved uneasily in his chair. It was the first time he had
ventured into the presence of Tessibel since he had put Frederick to
death.

"He air comin' home, then?"

There was a question in the pleading voice as her eyes fell first upon
one and then another.

"Nope," grinned Ezry, "he air to be took away."

Tessibel shrank back further and further, every muscle tired in its
agony of burden-bearing. The rotten post squeaked loudly, bending
beneath her weight, and over her in lightning rapidity swept the shadow
of the rope, snatching her father from her--and God. The student had not
limited the power of the cross; but Tess had discovered its limitations
in Ezra Longman's statement--limitations that made her quiver with pain,
as she pictured the evil thing which darkly menaced her loved one.

"He air a damn liar," burst forth Jake Brewer, "the jedge ain't said no
words what Ezy says he has."

Tessibel heard and understood. The splendid, buoyant youth gathered
instantly together, faith in the eternal promise of God sweeping over
her once more. She might have known that Daddy was safe. Every long day
had been filled with petitions, hurled at the feet of the Almighty:
Tess, in her ignorance, had juggled with the sacred name of Jehovah,
expecting the fulfillment of her prayers just as a boy, filled with
ecstatic faith, expects his ball to come back to him after he has tossed
it into the air. So would Daddy Skinner come to her, snatched from the
shadow of an ignominious death, through some miracle of God's goodness.

"It air over to-morry?" she stammered, holding no grudge against Ezra
Longman for his untimely joke.

"Yep."

"Then he air comin' home to-morry night?" she said almost in a whisper.

Ben Letts, looking at Ezra, closed one red lid, letting it fall slowly
over the blurred blind eye. Neither he nor the boy spoke.

Letts brought his squint gaze back to Tess.

"He air comin' home to-morry night?" she repeated questioningly, raising
her voice a little with an insistent glance at each fisherman. This time
Tess read denial in their faces, but smiled radiantly. What did they
knew about it? What did fishermen understand of the student's God ... of
the faith that would bring Daddy home to her in spite of the twelve grim
men, and all her father's enemies in Ithaca. Hadn't she consigned the
beloved humpbacked father to Him who held the worlds in the hollow of
His hand.

Ben Letts still gazed steadily at Tess, the red eyelids opening wider
and wider. She had never been so beautiful before. During the past two
months the girl had grown into a woman, into a soulful creature whom the
squatter Ben ardently desired for his wife. Ah, he would see to that!

He shoved his great legs up and down before him tumbling these things
over in his mind. The taming of such a girl would be his vicious
delight. The first thing to do would be to ply the scissors to the red
curls. Ben could see that the hair was clean, each curl clinging
lovingly to its mate, yet living apart--so different from the matted
locks of the Tess he had always known.

"Yer Daddy got good and mad to-day," remarked Jake Brewer abruptly, the
deadly silence grating upon his nerves.

"What about?" said Tess sharply.

"Dominie Graves were in the witness-box, and said as how yer pap were a
wicked daddy of a wickeder gal, and the jedge made him tell as how ye
was so cussed, and yer daddy's humps riz up like a cat's back wet with
cold tea."

Tess waited expectantly.

"And the Dominie said as how ye twiggled yer fingers to yer nose at
him," continued Jake. "Did ye?"

The pale face went to a deep crimson--she remembered the day well. The
Dominie had caught her stealing berries and like all the weaker ones in
a strife Tess had used her tongue bitterly--and had twiggled her
fingers.

The squatters went away, leaving Tessibel with a new feeling of shame.
Ben Letts went with reluctance--he dared not remain. After Skinner had
gone the way of all squatters who incurred the penalties of the law, he,
Ben Letts, would have the girl for weal or woe.




CHAPTER XI


The last day of Skinner's trial found Tessibel taking her lonely way
toward town. She was going for Daddy Skinner--to bring him home to a
shanty which she thought was clean, although the ragged curtain still
flapped its tatters over a dirty window and the cobwebs hung listlessly
from Daddy Skinner's unused net. But Tess had done her best, and her
heart sang with delightful expectancy as she neared the dangerous open
trestle which spanned the Hoghole gorge.

When she turned into town, her mind was at work with the thought of how
she would bring Daddy triumphantly through the row of squatter huts,
lead him even through the streets of Ithaca. Her vivid imagination
played with the scene: Frederick the student would see her; he would
know that together they had saved the dearest life ever given into the
hands of a jury.

Up the snow-covered street, through Dewitt park, and Into the little
lane she tramped. Here Tessibel halted. The court-room was so crowded
that an overflow of men stood in the street with overcoats tightly
buttoned, stood listening for the words that would satisfy their
demands: Orn Skinner must die. A demonstration of joy ringing from the
court made the child shiver--then smile. Not even the wicked jeering of
Daddy's enemies could shake her faith in the student's word. Twelve
jurors sat in their chairs, but a useless set of men, for a unanimous
ban of death had been pronounced upon the fisherman before any one of
the jury had taken the oath. Some of the evidence did not reach their
ears for they were thinking of other things--the man of two humps was as
far away from their homes or their hopes, as the rope that would end
him.

During the trial the prisoner had remained silent in his chair, with a
stolidity that aroused no sympathy for him. Not once was he seen to lift
his eyes to the judge; and but once, when Tess was being maligned by
Dominie Graves, did the bible-back rise and fall as if the heart beneath
were beating wildly. Skinner had not been allowed to testify in his own
defense, and, knowing the futility of it, he had not insisted upon
speaking.

His attorney made a few feeble remarks which, because of the speaker's
indifference and his disbelief in his client, fell without effect. The
prosecuting attorney took but ten minutes to sum up the case, telling
the jury that they knew their duty too well for him to attempt to
instruct them. "But," said he, "I will add one word of your own
convictions. These people have infested our beautiful city, sapping its
life like a great pest. The law is nothing to them--human life less.
There is one thing, gentlemen of the jury, of which they stand in awe,
and it is in your hands to give them one more lesson. That one thing
they fear is--the rope."

He sat down amid a dense silence. The judge spoke shortly and the twelve
jurors filed out past the stooping prisoner, who seemed to care so
little that he did not look upon them as they went.

Twenty minutes elapsed and the court officer announced in stentorian
tones that the verdict had been reached. Solemnly the twelve men seated
themselves whilst an expectant flutter passed over the room.

Then a voice droned:

"Prisoner, rise."

The lumbering form painfully raised its two humps.

"Prisoner, look upon the jury; jury, look upon the prisoner."

The grizzled head settled itself back between the two pulsing humps; the
steady eyes under the shaggy brows looking out for the first time in two
days upon the row of men who hated him--all popular citizens of Ithaca.

"Foreman, of the jury, have you found the prisoner innocent or guilty?"

A pause, a hush; then a deliberate:

"Guilty of murder in the first degree."

A little higher rose the bible-back of the fisherman, lower sunk the
large head between the deformed shoulders, like the receding head of a
turtle, hiding itself under its shell when an enemy draws near. Skinner
still stood with hypnotized eyes fastened on the jury; one thought in
his mind--Tess.

"Orn Skinner," began the judge, "is there any reason why the sentence of
this court should not be pronounced upon you in accordance with the
law?"

The fisherman turned his piercing eyes upon the judge, but attempted not
to speak.

"Orn Skinner--"

The judge was interrupted, there was a disturbing commotion in the back
of the court-room. He lifted his gavel for silence, his gaze falling
upon a dripping, shivering, red-haired girl, who raised to his face a
pair of copper-colored eyes in which shone a soul, the magnitude of
which the judge could not fathom with all his dignity.

"Orn Skinner," he finished, turning again to the fisherman, "twelve men
have found you guilty of murder in the first degree. The court, then,
passes its sentence upon you: you are to hang by the neck until you
are--dead."

The ponderous form of the doomed man straightened as though unafraid,
whilst the commotion increased--Tess was madly tearing her way through
detaining hands. Once free, she started up the aisle, the most
ridiculous little figure ever seen in Ithaca. The red hair was in curls
to the girl's hips--the young form covered with but a calico blouse
confined about the waist by a piece of hemp rope. Four huge thorns held
together the edges of a rent down the center of the skirt, which came
just above the knees, Daddy Skinner's cowhide boots lifting themselves
under the hem.

Every one save him whom she loved was unseen by Tess, and everything
unheard save the terrible sentence of death.

The pain-puckered wrinkles settled out of the wan little face; a smile
brightened the brown eyes and dimpled the tender twitching mouth,
altering the woful expression--for what was the mandate of an earthly
judge compared to the majestic promise of Heaven? the student had
said--but her smiling eyes fell for a moment on those of Frederick
Graves. The boy partly rose but sank back again, white to the ears, a
picture of mental suffering. Here through the silence came a shock to
the citizens of Ithaca. Sweet as a spring bird carolling its love song
rose Tessibel's beautiful voice:

        "Rescue the perishin'
         Care for the dyin'."

On and on up the aisle toward Daddy Skinner, forgetting or not knowing
that she was desecrating the dignity of the honorable judge upon the
bench, Tessibel clattered. Still no hand stayed her progress. Daddy
Skinner was standing outside the railing, close to his attorney, guarded
by a deputy. His fierce eyes turned at the sound of her voice, and the
sight of his beloved snapped them shut like a vise.

The old beard, now shaggy and unkempt, trembled, whilst a parched tongue
licked over the lips.

The long arms of the humpback slowly rose, and Tessibel sang herself
into the throbbing bosom of her father.

The prisoner's great horny hand descended upon the curly head and for a
moment the fingers of the girl tried to pry the wrinkled eyelids open.
Her singing ceased, and she spoke--no great orator ever had a more
intense audience.

"It air--it air Tess, Daddy Skinner, did ye think that her--had
forgot--and Goddy?"

Everyone in the room heard the musical voice.

"The jedge didn't know," Tess went on, "that God promised that ye was to
come home with Tessibel." And then, loosening herself from the trembling
fingers, Tess leaned toward the judge, a wealth of hair falling over
each shoulder.

"Did ye, kind, good man?"

His Honor, fascinated by the sight, bent toward her to make sure of her
words.

"I air Daddy's brat," she urged with a smile, "and Goddy in the sky
said as how Daddy Skinner would come home with Tessibel ... He air to go
with me, ain't he?"

Her voice, raised in sudden entreaty, the long eyes filled with an
anguished anxiety, sent a pang of pity unknown before through the heart
of the judge.

The audience rose as one man--only a swish and another dead silence.

"Ye air to come, Daddy Skinner," and without waiting for any further
consent she took her father's hand and drew him slowly through the aisle
up which she had so lately sung her way.

A man stepped into her path from among the spectators. Tess glanced up,
and saw before her the lowering face of Dominie Graves. From every other
soul in that room she had been given the bible-backed prisoner, for the
majesty of human law had been forgotten in the appeal to the higher one.

"Stop," shouted the pastor, determined to see the sentence of the court
carried out. He had placed himself directly in the squatter-girl's path,
and, turning toward the jury, flashed indignant eyes upon them.

"Have you all gone mad?" he demanded. "Are you going to allow a murderer
to escape from your hands?"

For one instant the condemned giant and the man of God scanned each
other's faces with intensity. There was dumb pleading in the one gaze,
and hard supremacy in the other. A spasmodic tremor ran over the
spectators--Tess had struck a note of tragedy in the affair which had
been overlooked by the thoughtless throng.

The judge, startled, spoke confusedly,

"Of course, of course," said he, "such a thing as this--"

"Would make our city the laughing-stock of the state," put in Graves,
his interruption of the judge passing unheeded. "Skinner, you know you
can't leave this court with that girl--"

Here a small boy broke in:

"She's the girl that twiggled her fingers at the minister."

Dominie Graves hushed the speaker with a wave of his hand, and went on:

"You have committed a murder, Skinner, and have been condemned to die by
hanging."

His voice was low and vibrant.

"And there's no escape for you, Skinner," he finished.

As his voice died away, Ithaca received another impetus to curiosity and
interest. A tall man in the back row rose and came forward.

"Mr. Graves," said the stranger solemnly, "you say that this man is to
hang for murder. I say that he shall be given another chance for his
life, and that he shall not hang if I can prevent it."

Deforrest Young, the noted professor of law from the University, was
looking at Graves. A frown gathered on the broad brow of the minister,
and every one gasped as the professor took Tessibel's hands in his.

"My child," and he bent lower that she might hear, for her bowed head
was the only evidence of her grief, "Your prayers have accomplished more
than you think. Keep on praying and pray hard, and the next time you
come here you shall take home--your Daddy Skinner."




CHAPTER XII


Twenty young people had gathered for the toffy pull at Minister Graves'.
Tess was the topic of conversation; every one was eager to talk of the
unheard-of action in the court-room that day.

"My mother says," chimed in a pretty girl, "that when that Skinner girl
walked up through the court room, she sounded like a horse trotting
along."

"She had on a pair of man's boots, that's why," said another, "but she
has a beautiful voice, hasn't she?"

This question was directed to Frederick Graves.

"Yes," he assented, flushing to his high-forehead line.

"And besides a beautiful voice," broke in Richard Hall, "she has a
mighty pretty face--and such hair! If she hadn't been crying and had so
many people around her, I should have spoken to her. She's worth
consoling!"

A sharp pang of jealousy shot through Frederick's heart. That another
should make lighter the burdens of the squatter girl filled him with
unrest. A pleading face flashed across his vision and Tessibel's voice
rang anew in his ears. He was living over again the moments spent in the
cabin, and his heart thrilled at the memory of the momentary glance sent
to him over the heads of the spectators in the crowded court-room.

Teola entered the drawing-room, turning the conversation from Tess to
the pleasure of the evening.

"Will some one help me pull the toffy?" said she.

Her eyes were upon Dan Jordan--he rose quickly to his feet and followed
the girl smilingly to the kitchen.

"I wanted you to help me get it ready," Teola said; coloring.

"I'm glad you chose me," replied Dan.

"I didn't ask you, did I?" The beautiful head hung low over the brown
mixture in the kettle.

"Your eyes did," laughed Dan. "Didn't you notice that none of the other
boys got up when you spoke." His glance filled with merriment as he went
on: "I think, too, that I should have been a little--jealous if anyone
else had--helped you."

"And your hands are so strong," murmured Teola.

"You only wanted my hands," queried the boy, trying to catch a glimpse
of her face. "I wish you had wanted me for some other--"

Teola stood with the long wooden spoon twirling in her fingers.

"I did want you for yourself, Dan--"

And then she stopped and nothing could be heard but the click, click,
click, of the toffy as it snapped to and fro in the huge fingers of the
student.

"I'm mighty glad that I chose Cornell for my college," broke in the boy
presently. "I thought first of going to Yale.... And you're pleased,
too, Teola, that I came to Ithaca? Aren't you?"

"Very glad," came the low voice distinctly.

"And I've never been so ambitious in all my life as I have since I've
been here, and known you, and I was wondering to-day if--if--"

Frederick's voice broke off the words; his big form loomed in the
doorway before Dan could finish his sentence.

"Haven't you kids finished that toffy? Better let me help, too."

There was a noticeable tremor in Teola's voice as she replied:

"We've finished, Frederick, and you can carry the butter and those
plates."

"I've something important to tell you, Teola," whispered Dan.

The girl did not answer, but the student knew that she would listen to
him in some future time.

The drawing-room was festooned with evergreens and winter ferns, wound
here and there with streamers of various-colored ribbons. Two large
lamps, one in the window, and the other on a table near the dining-room
door, sent forth their light through red shades. Glass dishes filled
with apples and golden oranges decorated the top of the piano and
surrounded the lamps.

When Dan and Teola left the kitchen, both flushed with the first
emotions of their youthful hearts, there came to them gurgles of girlish
laughter, intermingled now and then with the loud voice of some merry,
happy boy.

After two hours of strenuous toffy-pulling the tired young revellers sat
down to plates heaped with goodies.

Just at this juncture a ring of the door-bell pealed through the house.
A silence fell over the company and a sound of altercation came to them
distinctly. Suddenly the drawing-room door burst violently open and a
spectacle, in strange contrast to the cheery scene about them, flashed
upon the eyes of the young people. A red-haired girl, unkempt and
dripping, wild anxiety portrayed upon her face, stood in the doorway.
There was not the slightest embarrassment in her glance as her peculiar
eyes traveled the lines of boys and girls, sitting round the wall. When
at last they fell on Frederick, she took an impetuous step toward him, a
brilliant smile lighting the wan face. Stupefaction rested upon the
student as he recognized Tessibel Skinner.

"It air time--to pray," said she, looking straight at him, as he slowly
rose from his chair. "Daddy Skinner air to be took away--unless yer God
stops the rope."

Every word was distinct--unless God would stay the rope. The words
repeated themselves over in the boy's brain and his face deepened in
color. It was the beautiful faith of the wild, untaught young girl with
the hot blood rushing in her veins that called forth the flush. His
heart sickened with his own lack of confidence in God. He was to preach
of a crucified Saviour, but no such faith and hope as this of Tessibel
Skinner's would aid him. He was even now ashamed of the girl in cowhide
boots and torn, thin skirt.

As these thoughts floated past him, he saw the young squatter wither
under a giggle from a girl in the corner.

"Look at her feet," were the words that changed Tessibel's frankness to
embarrassment, her eager pathos to wofulness.

Tessibel shrank close to the door, for the first time realizing how out
of place she was.

"I were--I were--a fool to come, but--but--"

The earnestness of the vibrant voice, the proud, appealing young face
moved Frederick to pity and self-reproach.

"It was right--you should have come," said he, gently taking her hands,
"and no one dare question your privilege to ask a prayer for your
father."

Still retaining her fingers in his, he turned, explaining:

"This is Miss Skinner whose father is suffering now from a stroke of the
law. We, who have fathers and mothers whom we love, must wish her well."

Tessibel sank down, down, among her boots and rags, his words reducing
her to tears. Teola came to her brother's side. She had never before
been actually in the presence of a squatter, for, when they had brought
fish and berries to the back door, her mother had always ordered the
children to the front of the house; but now, filled with sympathy she
stooped down and placed her hand upon Tessibel's head. The touch was so
gentle that the fishermaid lifted her eyes to see who sorrowed with her.

The squatter covered the white fingers with tears and kisses. Then she
struggled to her feet, the nails in Daddy's boots scraping the polished
floor, making long white marks. To Tessibel there were no other persons
in the room save Frederick and his beautiful sister. She made a queer
upward movement with her head, wiping the tears away with the tattered
sleeve.

"I was afeared ye'd forget Daddy Skinner," she murmured. "The big man
from the hill said like you did. And I says it air prayin' time and I
comed."

She had forgotten the tears of a few minutes before, forgotten that
twenty pairs of searching youthful eyes watched her every movement and
mentally criticized her, from the masses of long hair to the rock-torn
boots on her feet. She only remembered the student--that he was smiling
into her eyes, and that, his sister, too, Teola Graves, had sympathized
with her.

With a radiant, grateful smile, she turned to go, the door opening under
her eager grasp. It was here that Dan Jordan spoke:

"Won't Miss Skinner have some coffee?"

Tessibel looked at him with an incredulous glance. He, too, had come
forward and stood with his kindly gray eyes fixed upon her face.

"Yes, yes, of course," hurriedly put in Teola, "pardon me--I forgot....
You shall have my cup.... Here, Tessibel! I may call you that, mayn't I?
Please drink some of mine."

Teola held the cup invitingly to the shivering lips, and Tessibel
swallowed it down in one gulp.

"I air goin' now," she said desperately, wiping away coffee drops that
lingered upon her face, "and ye ain't goin' to forget?"

This last was to Frederick, and he shook his head emphatically. He would
not forget again; he would make the girl's father a special medium to
establish a line of faith between the God he professed to love and
himself--the quality of which should be no less than the one that
Tessibel had cultivated during her weary weeks of waiting.

No thought entered anyone's mind of asking the girl if she were afraid
of the dark night--she seemed so much a part of the darkness, of the
falling snow and thrashing trees, that she was allowed to depart without
a question. As he stood on the Rectory steps, the clicking of the big
boots came to Frederick long after the slender form had disappeared from
sight.

After that the party broke up, for the merriment had died in Tessibel's
grief. An impression had been made upon the thoughtless boys and girls,
and a shadow rested on each face as they bade "good-night" to their
young hostess.

"She's the prettiest girl I ever saw," confided Teola to Frederick
afterward; "her eyes are the color of a marigold."

In her heart Teola was glad that she had gone to the squatter in
sympathy, for, upon leaving, Dan Jordan had whispered words that had
burned deep into her soul:

"You are an angel, Teola _dear_, and I--love--you."

For one instant the tall student had bent his head, laying his lips upon
hers--and had gone without another word.




CHAPTER XIII


The last day of the trial was so different from that of Tessibel's
dreams! Again she must cross the dark Hoghole trestle alone on her way
to the hut. But the singing in her heart when she left the Rectory took
away the pain of her loneliness. Frederick Graves had said that she had
done right in coming to him and asking prayers for "Daddy Skinner." Her
faith in the student carried her above the material things of the earth,
more than her absolute faith in God, for like women, Tessibel lived and
had faith through the man of her choice.

It was nearly midnight when she passed Kennedy's wheat field in which
capered Pete, the brindle bulldog. She called to him softly, pronouncing
his name twice in loving resonance, which brought a low, pleased howl
from the coarse throat of the dog. But the exhausted squatter-girl did
not wait to touch the long, red tongue as Pete thrust his nose through
the fence. She passed quickly down the lane to her father's hut. Turning
the corner of the mud cellar, she saw dimly a man's form leaning against
the shanty door. Her eyes were accustomed to marking correctly through
the darkness, and it took Tess but a moment to ascertain that the
lounging figure was Ben Letts.

In an instant, the first real fear she had ever felt swept over her and
she drew back into the shadows. As a child she had fled from this man
because he tantalized her; as a woman she dreaded him more than any
reptile that came from the earth.

The man, hearing footsteps, raised his head; the silence continuing, he
dropped it again, thinking he had been mistaken, and resumed his former
position of waiting.

Tessibel wondered if she should go bravely forward--insist that the
shanty was hers, and that he should go away. The mud cellar was between
her and the waiting man, and as she peered closer to see if Ben were
still there one brilliant tangle of hair fell over her shoulder. Ben
Letts caught the movement and Tessibel knew it.

Alert as a young deer, she turned and fled back up the lane. Daddy's
boots impeded her speed and one after the other she kicked them off. She
could hear the man running after her, shouting his rage into her
tingling ears. He was gaining upon the girl and commanded her to stop.

"If I get my claws on ye once," he growled, "it'll be bad for ye."

Tessibel heard and flew faster. There was no one to help her and her
only salvation lay in her own two sturdy little legs and bruised feet.
She reached the tracks but did not dare run the ties--she might trip in
the darkness, and nothing could save her from her enemy. Her eyes,
strained with convulsive fright, lifted one moment to the sky, and her
glance fell directly upon the giant pine whose branches formed the image
of her fantastic God. Her lips fell apart with a gasp--she fancied her
Deity sent her an assurance of aid.

"Goddy--Goddy," was her petition, "for the love of yer Christ ... and
the student."

Suddenly out upon the air rang the voice of one of Tessibel's friends.
The brindle bulldog from Kennedy's farm had heard the unequal race. With
short tail raised, his fat neck bristling with stubby hair, he started
for the tracks, as Tess did for the fence when she heard his growl. As
the girl came on and on, the dog bounded along the ground toward her.
Tess opened her lips and spoke sharply--and a pleased bark came in
response.

God had heard and answered her. One wild leap in the air, and the sound
of tearing clothes as her already tattered skirt came in contact with
the barbed wire--and Tess was crouching down in the safe-keeping of the
brindle bull. The dog whirled frantically around, licking her face. Fear
weakened her tongue--she could not speak--only little spasmodic sobs
burst from the parted lips. She caught the huge dog to her breast and
waited.

Ben Letts was on the tracks; she could hear his big chest heaving with
fast-coming breath. He halted on the other side of the fence.

Pete scented an enemy and straightened out his strong muscles like whip
cords, a hoarse growl coming from between his jaws.

Ben leaned over the fence with an oath.

"Ye'd better come away from him," he grunted threateningly. "Ye air
thinking the brute can save ye--but I'll put a bullet through his pate."

Tessibel knew that the man had no rifle with him; and by the time he
could get one she and the dog would be far away. Her mind worked fast
under the pressure.

"What do you want, Ben Letts?" she demanded.

"I just wanted to talk to yer," wheedled the man. "Come over the fence,
will ye?"

"Ye can talk to me here," sullenly replied Tess. "I don't want to hear
none of yer dum gab."

"It air somethin' nice--it air candy," feigned Ben. Then the tones
hardened in the coarse voice, and he ended:

"Ye can't stay always with the brute."

"To-night I can, and in the day I ain't afeared--I don't want no candy."

The brindle bulldog lifted his head again and sent a low snarl in the
direction of the fisherman--Ben in his rage had come too close to the
fence. The animal's warning sent him back. Months before, Pete had
buried his teeth in the man's hand and Ben would bear the marks to his
grave.

"Ye go home, Ben Letts," insisted Tess. "Ye ain't no business here. Go
home to yer mammy."

"I'm a-goin' to stay, just the same," rejoined Ben, sitting down upon
the tracks.

Tessibel wound her arms around the dog's neck, banking the red curls
under her cheek for a pillow. It was good to rest with her friend.
Between the fence wires she could see the branches of the pine tree, its
shadowy arms creating odd figures across the light streaks in the sky.
What a wonderful being the student's God was! He had listened to the cry
of a squatter and had saved her.

"Yer daddy ain't a-comin' home," Ben Letts broke in upon her
meditations.

"He air," retorted Tess. "He air the nextest time I go for him."

"It air a lie," insisted the fisherman, "ye comes with me to the
minister and I'll make yer an hones' woman. Ye'll have to cut that mop
and settle down like a woman should. Do ye hear?... Tessibel, I says an
hones' woman!"

Tessibel shifted her head from Pete's neck and sat up.

"Ye says as how--ye and--me--will go to the minister?"

"Yep."

"And we air to be--married ... eh?"

"Yep."

"How about--the--brat--and--and--and Satisfied's girl?"

Myra's secret had slipped from her. Ben's silence invited her to
proceed.

"Yer brat air sick to his grave, he air," said she mournfully, a tear
settling in her voice, making its sweetness rough, "and Myry air a-dyin'
of a broken heart.... If yer wants to make an hones' woman, make her
one, that air what I says, I does. And ye broke her arm on the ragged
rocks! Ye did! And then yer comes--and talks about bein' hones'," the
musical voice rose to a cry. "Ye can't make a woman hones' for ye ain't
hones' yerself."

Without a sound Ben rose from the tracks, reached for a stone and
whirled it through the fence at Tessibel. The stone missed her, but
struck the dog. Trembling with rage, Pete lifted his great body with a
low, vicious growl.

Tessibel sprang from the ground, whilst another stone hurtled through
the air, catching her curls in its flight. Then she lifted the lower
wire of the barbed fence. Pete crouched, and wiggled his flattened body
through. Ben hadn't expected this--he turned and ran. The skurrying legs
of the dog carried him quickly on after the fisherman. While Ben,
screeching like a great night owl, hooted out his fear of the maddened
dog, and yelled for Tess to call him off.

The girl did not speak, only waited, waited until a louder cry from the
hunted man assured her that Pete had gripped him. Tessibel scarcely
dared breathe; her friend, God's earthly instrument, sent to save her,
and her mortal enemy were in deadly combat.

Ben's cries had ceased, but the listening girl could hear the two bodies
as they turned over and over beyond on the tracks--and rolled into the
ditch. Her feet were nearly frozen but she gathered them under her skirt
and dumbly waited.

Then came no sound--there was nothing but a deathly silence in the dim
shadows near the land.

Would she ever see either Ben or the dog again? There was no danger that
Pete would--

"Ben," she called loudly, leaning over the fence. No answer came from
the deep trench by the railroad bed.

"Pete, Pete, come to Tessibel, come to Tessibel."

Out of the blackness came the dog, his head hanging low, the angry
sparkle in his eyes quenched.

Tess raised the wire once more for Pete's body to wriggle under. The
girl shouted anxiously for Ben but no answer came to her call.

Crouching beside Pete, Tessibel reasoned out a way of escape: if she
took the brindle bulldog to the hut with her, she would be safe from Ben
were he lurking about. She propped the lower wire of the fence high
with a stick so that Pete could reach Kennedy's barn on the hill again
when she sent him home. Together the girl and the bristling Pete slid
silently to the railroad tracks, Tessibel holding tightly to the dog's
collar. Some fifty feet beyond he twisted his heavy neck, set forth his
huge jaw, and refused to move.

Beside the track was a long dark object--it was undeniably,
unquestionably quiet. Tess tugged at the dog's collar and dragged him
resisting from the spot.

Down the lane ran the squatter and the dog with no pause save to pick up
the cowhide boots from the side of the path, where Tess had cast them in
the mad race. She clasped the head of Pete as she opened the hut door.

"Ye can come in, too, Pete," she whispered, lifting the ugly head, "and
go home in the morning."

Tessibel locked the door, but did not light a candle. Slipping her wet
clothes to the floor, she crawled into Daddy's bed, and with the
forgetfulness of youth sank into a sleep.




CHAPTER XIV


The next morning after her encounter with Ben Letts, Tess sat up in bed,
wondering what had happened. Then she remembered. One slant ray of sun
breaking through the dirty curtain showed that the day was far advanced.
She jumped out of bed, opened the door and allowed Pete to scamper away.

After kindling a fire and frying a fish, she sat down to eat.

Suddenly a knock on the door startled her. Ben might return even after
his lesson of the night before. Without unclasping the lock, she called
out:

"Who air it?"

"It air me, Tessibel. Open the door.--It air Myry!"

Tess flung open the door with a smile. She drew back, seeing Myra's
seamed face, white and drawn.

"Ye be sick, Myry?"

"Nope!"

"Air it the brat, then?"

"Nope, it air Ben Letts. He were hurt by the Brindle Bull at Kennedy's
Farm. Ezy and 'Satisfied' found him near dead on the tracks and took him
home."

Tess stood waiting, wide-eyed, without a word.

"He wouldn't say nothin' about it," complained Myry; "just says that he
air goin' to get even with some one."

"Have ye seen him?" stammered Tess.

"Yep, this mornin' in his shanty. He were cut bad. They got the horse
doctor to sew him up. He air sick, Ben air!"

"And the brat," demanded Tess, changing the subject purposely.

"Sick the hours through," replied Myra bitterly. "He hes got the
pitifullest cry that breaks my heart all the time. But he ain't so sick
as his pappy."

"Ben Letts ain't a-goin' to die, air he?"

Tessibel's woful expression caused Myra to shake her head emphatically,
her thin lips twitching, then tightening under the nervous strain.

"Nope, he ain't, but he air goin' to be sick a long time. He air the
brat's pa, and I want to do somethin' for him."

"What?"

"He air wantin' to see ye, Tessibel. Will ye go to him?"

"Nope," Tess burst forth spontaneously.

Myra looked at her curiously.

"He ain't amountin' to much," she ventured, "but he air a pappy--that
air somethin', ain't it?"

"Yep," mused Tessibel. "A daddy air more than a mammy."

So had Tessibel and Myra been brought up to believe. The squatter women
fawned at the feet of their brutal husbands, as a beaten dog cringes to
its master. That Ben Letts had broken Myra's arm on the ragged rocks,
and yet the girl wanted to aid him, showed Tess the superiority of the
male sex, and Myra loved the squint-eyed fisherman, she evidenced it in
every action.

The lips of the younger squatter were sealed about the trail which she
herself had laid in the midnight tragedy. But through the tender young
heart flashed the hope that the experience with the dog would cause Ben
Letts to turn his face toward the wretched, shrunken creature, who had
suffered so much through him. She contemplated Myra an instant.

"Do ye want me to see him?" she asked, rising.

"Yep," replied Myra, the dull eyes filled with a momentary sparkle. "He
hes somethin' to say to ye, and I did say as how ye would come."

"Air he alone?" questioned Tess.

"Nope, his mammy air with him--we'll go now--eh?"

Slipping on Daddy's boots was Tessibel's assent, and they started
through the underbrush in silence.

"The brat ain't goin' to die, air he?" asked Tess presently.

It had been several days since she had seen Myra's little son. The
troubles of Daddy Skinner had taken up every moment of her time.

"Mebbe," grunted Myra unemotionally; "he howls like a sick pup from
mornin' till night."

"I air a goin' home with ye, Myry," assured Tessibel; "he won't yap when
I sings to him."

The lake had risen over the strip of beach, its waters freezing against
the rocks. This forced the girls to take the path through the wood to
the hill beyond. Until they came in sight of Ben Letts' cabin, they said
no more.

At their knock Ben's mother softly opened the door. Her shaggy gray hair
had not been combed and her fierce old eyes glowed with agony unsoftened
by tears.

"Ben air too sick to get up," she explained awkwardly, presenting each
girl a chair, "I said as how ye couldn't come, Tessibel, but Ben said
Myry were to bring ye."

From the back room came the sound of belabored breathing and a hoarse
voice called for Tessibel. The squatter girl rose to her feet, her color
changing from red to white. The thought of the fisherman with his
dog-bitten face was repulsive to her.

"Ye be goin' in with me to see him, ain't ye, Myry?" The brown eyes
entreated that she should not be sent to Ben Letts alone.

Myra Longman shook her head. She knew that the brat's pa did not want to
see her, and again she shook her head as Tessibel waited.

"He air been askin' all the mornin' for ye, Tess," urged Mrs. Letts,
"Ben ain't no likin' for Myry, Ben ain't!"

A dull red flush crimsoned Myra Longman's face. She watched Tess
enviously as the girl tiptoed through the doorway and disappeared.

Ben Letts was stretched out on the rope cot, his massive head and thick
neck swathed in bandages. Two huge hands, with patches of plaster here
and there lay outside the red Indian blanket. The swollen upper lid was
tightly pressed over his blind eye, the squint one slowly opening at
Tessibel's entrance.

She looked down upon the bandaged face but for a moment; neither of them
spoke.

"I see ye comes," Ben broke in at last.

"Yep, I's here ... What do ye want?"

A drop of salt water oozed from the weak eye; Ben moved his head as if
in pain.

"Sop up the tear with the rag, will ye, Tess?" he grunted. "It air
burnin' like hell fire."

Tessibel took the soiled cloth in her fingers, and not too lightly did
as Ben bade her.

"Ye didn't tell Myry how I comed sick, did ye?" asked Ben, settling his
head back upon the pillow.

Tess gave a negative gesture.

"Er no one else?"

"Nope!"

"Ye be a pert girl, Tessibel, and I were a cuss for trying to scare
ye--but the brindle bull has got to die."

"Nope, he ain't got to die," frowned Tess.

"When I gets up he eats what I gives him," assured Ben. "He has to die,
I says, I does.... But ye be a pert gal, Tess."

Ben moved his head to bring the girl within the vision of his one eye.

"What be ye wantin' with me?" Tess muttered. "I wants to go home."

She saw another tear roll down the plastered cheek, and repeated her
operation with the rag.

"What do ye want?" she demanded again.

"To tell ye thet I air a goin' to make an hones' woman of ye. I's a
goin' to marry ye. I knows I's a pappy, but the brat'll die, and he'll
be forgot like yer daddy will!"

Tess instantly froze into a white, tense little form. She did not follow
the fisherman's glance as he motioned her to take up the cloth.

"I's a tellin' yer mammy to wipe yer old eye," she said pettishly. "I
ain't got no notion of bein' an hones' woman ... I hates yer like I
hates Ezry Longman."

She wheeled to go out, but the man stayed her with a grunt.

"I's to be sick for a long time," exclaimed he, "and mammy will step to
the grave most any day ... I wants pert fingers to put the plasters on
my cuts."

Here he groaned and fought for the cloth, the salt tears scorching the
rents in the skin as they rolled hot from the red eye and soaked into
the plasters. The squatter girl mechanically wiped away the tears,
turning again.

"Myry air pert," she said, halting in the door. "She air more than
that--her fingers air lovin' ones. These," and she held up her two brown
hands, "would be hurtin' ye, cause I hates ye so."

       *       *       *       *       *

Tessibel and Myra walked away from Ben's hut in silence, up the ragged
rocks to the Longman shanty.

"Ben were askin' to marry yer, Tess, weren't he?" demanded Myra as they
approached the door.

Tess nodded.

"Were he sayin' as how ye could take care of him?"

"Yep."

"Be ye goin' to?" The intense longing and misery in her voice made Tess
gasp:

"Nope, he air too mean a cuss to live. If he air the brat's pa, let the
brat's ma take care of him. The brat air a good little devil."

Mrs. Longman was moving about in the loft overhead when the two girls
entered the shanty.

Tess went to the wooden box and looked down upon the small, pinched face
of the sleeping infant. The babe had worn out his little lungs,
screeching in his pain, the small faded eyes rolling backward as he
slept.

The young mother came quietly to the side of her Squatter friend.

"If the brat dies," she began in a low, tense tone, "be ye goin' to
marry Ben Letts?"

"Nope, I ain't never goin' to marry nobody!"

"Yep, ye will, when ye gets done bein' a baby!"

Tess drew her eyes from the dozing infant and glanced at Myra.

"I wants a Bible," said she deliberately.

"What for?"

"To read out of!"

"Can ye read?"

"Nope, not much, but I can spell out words, and write a bit. And the
Bible says as how, if ye seeks, ye'll find what ye seeks."

The shining eyes were sending a truthful message into the heart of the
young mother.

"That ain't nothin' to do with Ben Letts," muttered Myra.

"Yep, it air," insisted Tess. "It says what ye seeks ye find. Ain't ye
seekin' Ben Letts?"

"I knows where he air already," sullenly replied Myra.

"But ye can seek his lovin's, can't ye?... I's a seekin' Daddy--and
somethin' else."

"What?"

"To be readin' and writin' like--like the minister's gal does. I air
a-seekin' it every day!"

"How?"

Tess flushed. She could not tell Myra of the long bearded God in the
pine tree, nor of the stumbling prayers she had repeated night after
night. Myra understood that she could sing, so Tess said laconically:

"I sings for it sometimes, and that air a seekin'."

Myra grunted.

"I can't sing," and she frowned.

The babe whined in the cradle and Tessibel took him up. The glorious
voice hushed the child to sleep, Myra Longman bitterly scanning the
beautiful face. There were only two years between her and Tessibel, and
her own poor, ghastly wrinkled face looked years older. If she were only
pretty, Ben might love her. Tess had the splendid vigor of healthy
youth--Myra, the worn-out complexion of a bad digestion. Beans and bacon
had made the one beautiful--and destroyed the other.

Suddenly Myra leaned over with a new expression in her eyes.

"Tessibel, I tries to seek Ben Letts and his lovin's for me and the
brat."

Tessibel placed the small boy in the box, then she and Myra obeyed Mrs.
Longman's fretful demand that they draw up and eat.




CHAPTER XV


That evening Minister Graves came blustering in after his family were
seated at the table. What was this ridiculous thing that he had heard?
His home disgraced, his position ruined, his children ostracized. He
glanced at Teola and Frederick. His wife, fastening Babe's napkin under
the child's chin, remonstrated.

"Why, father, what's the trouble?"

"I was making a clerical call on Mrs. Robman to-day," fumed the Dominie,
"and that girl of hers, and a saucy one she is, too, burst into the
room, and, mother, what tale do you think she told--before us?"

Frederick glanced at his sister, but Teola's eyes were upon her empty
plate. Mrs. Graves shook her head.

"That that Skinner girl came here last night and in all her rags and
filth drank coffee from our daughter's cup! Madame, did you ever imagine
that such a disgrace could fall upon you?"

Mrs. Graves looked helplessly from her husband's distorted face to her
son and daughter.

"She came into your home," went on the minister, "and was asked to take
refreshments from your cups. Mrs. Robman said that she disliked to think
that such degraded guests were allowed in your home.... Do you
understand what that means, Mrs. Graves?"

"Let Frederick explain, father," pleaded the trembling wife; "he was
going to speak and you stopped him. What and how did it happen?"

"The girl came to the Rectory to ask prayers for her father," said
Frederick, an expression darkening his eyes which his mother dreaded.

"Prayers ... prayers!" roared the minister, "Prayers for a squatter and
a murderer!... And drinking coffee from your cups. Such a disgrace can
never be lifted from this house."

"What hurt did she do?" irreverently asked Babe. Frederick was thankful
for the child's frank question.

"Hurt? Harm, you mean. If she should just hurt a person that could be
mended. Harm was what she did!"

"What harm?" persisted Babe.

"Madam, you see your children are all growing up like heathens. There
arn't any of the parents whose sons and daughters were here last night,
who won't think a long time before they allow them to come again. You
understand, don't you, that that squatter covered with germs of all
kinds drank from your daughter's cup."

Mrs. Graves started preceptibly. She was noted for a fear of germs.

"Teola, your mouth must be scoured with peroxide ... Oh, if some one
would only tell me how it all happened!"

Frederick rose from his chair and impulsively laid his hand on his
mother's shoulder. To Teola he looked so tall and strong, so capable of
explaining, that she rose, too.

"I will tell you mother," said the student. "The girl was in distress.
In some way she had been led to believe that prayers, effective prayers,
could bring about any desired result. She simply came to ask us to pray
for her father."

Teola was by his side now, reassuringly pressing his arm.

"And where would she go," she broke in suddenly, "if not to a minister's
home?"

The pastor's whole family, at least the members that had been
submissive--for Babe had always challenged her father's commands--was
rising against him. His wife, instead of taking her willful children to
task, was weeping; his son and daughter stood beside her refuting every
word he said. He brought down his hand with a bang, his eyes narrowing
into a slit.

"You will every one do as I say," he cried. "Frederick, you are to stay
away from classes for two days, your professors knowing that you have
disobeyed your father. If your fellow students ask you why you are
absent, you must tell them what I have said. And, you, Teola--"

Frederick stopped the rush of words.

"If I stay away from college two days," he said in a low tone, so
deliberate that every word burned into the mother's brain, "I shall
never go back again. I am no longer a child and I won't be punished. And
what is more, I shall leave your home forever. You may take your choice,
father, but not until I make another statement. The girl from the lake
asked me to pray for her. That is my intention, and I shall do more if
possible. I shall use every bit of influence I have to aid her father to
escape hanging.... Also, if you punish Teola, you will never see me
again."

Mrs. Graves had risen from her chair. She walked straight to her
son--placed her hand upon him.

"Frederick, you wouldn't leave your mother?"

The strong arm pressed about the wearied little form reassuringly.

"And you can bet, papa Graves," put in Babe, "that I'll go with mamma
any old day, that's what I will."

Teola stood irresolutely, looking first at Frederick, then at her
father. She went toward the minister and almost whispered,

"Father, let me speak! The girl came without having been invited by
anyone, and she did not stay five minutes. She was drenched through, and
cold ... I gave her my cup of coffee, and she stated her errand and went
away."

The minister rose, leaving his supper untouched, put on his overcoat,
not one remonstrating word coming from his family, and went out.

Pastor Graves made his way up the town through the main street to Bates'
drug-store, his hunger having died in his anger and amazement.

He was positive that he could have brought his children to terms, had
not their mother taken sides with them. His thoughts went back to the
early days of his married life when nothing had disturbed their peace;
the children obeyed, and Mrs. Graves thought her husband's word the
essence of all law.

He turned into the drug-store in the middle of the block. Here met,
nearly every evening, the head ones of his flock for a little while to
talk over religion and politics. Outsiders called it the "Amen Corner"
of Ithaca.

"Ah," exclaimed the druggist, "you're early, Graves. Must have had your
supper at the going down of the sun."

Graves coughed his embarrassment and sat down.

"Feeling sick, Elias?"

The druggist opened the door for a child to pass out.

"No, not ill, only disgusted with the world in general."

"Skinner's girl coming to the court went against your notions, eh?"

"And every one else's with any sense," snapped Graves.

"Professor Young stopped in here to-day on his way up the hill," resumed
Bates, "he had been over to the jail, talking to Skinner, and he says
that the man will be murdered if the state hangs him."

"That's all Young knows about it," growled the minister. "You and I know
these people, Bates, better then Young does, and Skinner's word isn't
worth the powder to blow it up with."

Bates took his accustomary position on the book-keeper's stool and
spread his long hands out on his knees.

"Well, the professor says," he went on, "that Skinner can prove that he
didn't use the gun."

"How can he prove it?" asked Graves sharply, "only by the oaths of men
with no more veracity than he has. I wouldn't believe one of those
squatters if he used the sacred oath twenty times over."

"Maybe the next jury will think differently," argued the druggist.

"Bigger fools they then," interrupted Graves. "I don't know what the
town is coming to if the fishermen can shoot down our officials without
even remonstrance. I'll tell you what, Bates, there'll be a city war
over Skinner. Let Young take up the cudgel, and I'll see what the church
can do. There's power in the pulpit, I can tell you that."

Bates agreed to this.

"If the citizens of this city," continued the minister, encouraged by
the evident acquiescence of the druggist, "should take this matter up as
a body, ten men like Young couldn't bring about Skinner's acquittal."

"I'm not so sure," muttered Bates.

"I'm sure," insisted Graves strenuously, "very sure, for, if to a man
every one is ready to do his duty, what kind of a jury could they have?
Like yesterday's--conviction, swift and sure."

"But" objected the druggist, "a juror who takes his oath in a murder
case, must know little or nothing of it. Men would not be accepted if
for a week or month they had listened to combative sermons against the
prisoner. And you certainly wouldn't have a juror perjure himself, would
you, Graves?"

"The district attorney is no fool," replied the minister, softening his
argument under the shocked expression of Bates; "he knows when the state
is to be benefited by the outcome of a trial. He can leave off certain
questions; it has been done."

"I know it," interrupted Bates. "But--it seems hardly fair."

Just then the door opened, and Silas Jones, the richest man in the town,
took his seat with the other two "Ameners." The fascinating subject of
the day, the unusualness of the squatter trial and the girl with the
singing voice, continued to be the topic of conversation. Minister
Graves' family, in standing out against him in a matter so near his
heart, only strengthened his desire to see the end as he wished it to
be--the sentence of yesterday executed against the fisherman without
another trial.

"Young lost his senses to-day, don't you think so, Silas?" he asked.

"Well," drawled Jones, "if Skinner didn't commit willful murder, I'd
hate to see him hang. It wouldn't do any harm as I see to give him
another chance."

"You'll change your mind in church next Sunday," commented the parson.
"I'm going to show every man his duty clear and plain."

He brought down his hand upon his knee with an egotistical slap.

"All folks don't think the same way you do, Dominie," persisted Jones.
"Now then, Bill Hopkins of the toggery shop, he don't believe in women
speakin' in meetin'."

The minister distinctly remembered this. More than once had he taken the
delinquent Bill Hopkins to task for taking his letter to another church,
but Bill could not be induced to return, because the creed had not been
followed by its members, nor enforced by the shepherd of the flock.

Hopkins was the best-read man in the whole county, and his voice went
far when he spoke, but for over a year his place among the "Ameners" had
been vacant--also his pew in Graves' church. The Dominie needed such men
as Bill in his congregation if he would win his fight against the
squatters. These thoughts were prominent in his mind when the door
admitted a great gust of wind--and the famous Bill Hopkins. The parson
caught his breath. Bill spoke a genial good-evening, shook hands around,
and bought a small bottle of witch-hazel, some camphor, and was about to
leave, when Graves ejaculated:

"Sit down, Bill."

Bill sat down, took his hat from his bald head, and placed his fingers
complacently around a smooth white wart on his cranium, and waited.

He looked questioningly at the rich man, and the druggist with the
wide-spread hands. The church subject had been thrashed out long
ago--the women of the congregation gaining the day in spite of the
august presence of some of the deacons, who openly declared that the
female portion of the church was unbecomingly usurping the authority of
the men. Because of this flagrant disobedience of the church's creed,
Bill Hopkins had taken his name from the roll, and was known to have
said that he would not be led by a shepherd who could not order his
flock. To-night he smacked his lips for the coming argument while the
minister, glad to have him among them again, felt his hopes rise higher.

Bates flattened his hands with delight, noticing a smile that drew down
the corners of Jones' lips. Long ago the pleasant religious argument of
Ithaca's "Amen" corner had become a thing of the past, because of the
absence of Bill Hopkins. He had been the zest of the crowd.

The Dominie, forgetting his grievance of the supper table, straightened
himself for the combat. He had suddenly conceived a plan whereby he
could gain a friend to aid him in the coming squatter fight. Bill
Hopkins still waited with a quizzical expression in his shaggy-browed
eyes.

"Strange happenings in town for a few days past," said Graves.

"The Skinner case?" asked Bill, rubbing gently the smooth white wart.

"Yes," assented the minister. "What do you think of it all, Bill?"

"The girl's a brick," commented Hopkins--and sank into silence.

"The girl's not being tried for murder," rebuked the minister sharply.

"But she played her part with feelin' and power," was the drawling
reply.

The clergyman saw a flitting expression of triumph in the druggist's
face.

"She'd make a capital actress," ruminated Graves.

He glanced at the rich man to see if he coincided with him, but that
gentleman was looking into the street.

"We all act in this world," excused Bill; "even you ministers use
methods that you have found in elocution to bring your beliefs to bear
upon your congregations."

Graves did not relish being classed with the squatter's child, but he
made no comment upon it. He changed his tactics.

"Bill," said he, "have you altered your ideas about the church?"

"What ideas?"

"Well, about women having the privilege of speaking in meetings."

Bill shook his head, and Graves resumed:

"Well, I'm changing my mind ... I'm going to stop this nonsense."

The rich man sat up and the druggist, scenting a religious rumpus, drew
his stool nearer. Bill coughed loudly.

"Those women," continued Graves, "have had their own way too long ... I
shall put a stop to it immediately."

Bill Hopkins wondered what was coming. It behooved him to wait and see;
so he settled back with his head bowed and his piercing eyes directed
steadily upon the pastor. A dark flush mounted to the minister's face.
He had expected that such condescension to an ex-member would be
received with enthusiasm. As no other of the "Ameners" offered a word,
Graves continued:

"Next thing that we know, the women will be coming into the church with
uncovered heads. I wonder I've stood it so long."

Still Bill did not speak. He could remember that when the dispute had
been at its height these had not been the sentiments of Pastor Graves.
In fact, when a delegation had gone to the parsonage to demand obedience
to the constitution of the church, the Dominie had replied that the
ladies had come out victorious in the matter, and that it was an
old-fashioned idea to forbid the women to speak or pray in public if
they so wished; and the crest-fallen delegates had gone away from the
rectory, and Bill Hopkins, with several others, from the church.

Seeing that not one of the respectable "Ameners" was going to help him,
the Dominie sputtered out his wrath in another direction.

"If Young had kept his hands off that Skinner business, there wouldn't
have been the slightest chance of the fisherman winning out."

"Ah! here's where the shoe pinches," thought Hopkins; "the parson needs
help to wrest Skinner's squatter rights from him."

But he did not voice his thoughts.

"I guess that's right, Dominie," were his spoken words. "Skinner didn't
have many friends in the court until that girl came in. She certainly
did make a change in the ideas of most people in this town."

"Fools! to let a child like that break up the dignity of a court-room."
Graves settled back angrily in his chair. He had lost in the game he was
about to play with Bill Hopkins--lost before the game had begun.

"Skinner can thank his kid for his life, nevertheless," interjected
Jones, "for another jury will never convict him.

"Think not?" queried the druggist.

Bates' question remained unanswered, for Dominie Graves turned the
subject again.

"Bill, if I come out strong in the church and give you your own way in
the disputed question, then you must do something for me. I'll speak to
you later about it."

"Pretty far along in the day," was Bill's answer, "but as you please,
Dominie. I don't know what you want, but most of your friends will stick
by you if the church is run on its old plan and according to the creed
and the Bible."

When Minister Graves walked home he felt that in spite of family
differences he had scored a point in getting from Hopkins a tacit
consent to come back into his congregation.




CHAPTER XVI


When the family gathered about the table the next morning in the
rectory, the Dominie told his wife solemnly that he wished to talk with
her after the children had gone to school. Breakfast over, he broached
the subject of the women talking in prayer meeting, Mrs. Graves
listening eagerly. As the pastor's wife she had done the best in her
power; but her power had been weak, and the stronger ones in the
congregation had ridden over her convictions and teachings.

There was Augusta Hall, the beautiful wife of one of the deacons who had
demanded that she be allowed to voice her sentiments in public; and
other women had followed her lead, although it had been absolutely
against the tenets of the church.

This woman was in Mrs. Graves' mind, when the Dominie brought down his
hand upon the table, saying he had decided to stop once and for all the
nonsense in his church, which was keeping the best of his members away.

Mrs. Graves breathed Mrs. Hall's name meekly to her husband.

"She can leave the church," growled Graves. "In my mind it's almost
sacrilegious for women to dare to go so far that some of the best of its
members will leave a well-regulated church. Maria, you must talk to Mrs.
Hall and bring her to reason."

"If you can't succeed," replied Mrs. Graves, "how do you expect me to?
You're her pastor."

"I will go and talk to her first, then you follow close upon my heels,
Maria, and between us both, we will get Bill Hopkins and Carey back
among us. If they come the rest will."

       *       *       *       *       *

Late in the afternoon Mrs. Graves put on her bonnet, and, with a sigh,
tied the strings under her withered chin. In the very moment when the
congregation had at last become reconciled to the privileges extended to
its female members, another church war was to be fought. But the little
woman dared not refuse her husband's command, so she climbed the long
hill toward the south and timidly rang the bell marked "Hall."

Her husband would have been there and gone, for the afternoon was well
toward its close.

As the servant ushered her in, Mrs. Graves heard loud voices coming from
the drawing-room, and instantly recognized one of them as the
clergyman's.

"It's all very well, Mrs. Hall," he was saying, "for the women to work
if they can do it without showing too much authority, but, my dear lady,
I have been studying into this matter and it is positively against the
Scriptural injunction for women to speak in church."

"Where did you read that?" asked Mrs. Hall, handing the Dominie a Bible,
which he did not take in his half-extended fingers.

"I know, and you know where it is without looking," said he sharply.
"There is a command from Paul that all women should keep silent in the
church in the presence of men."

"Paul was an old bachelor," irreverently answered Mrs. Hall. "What did
he know about women and their needs?"

"He received the commandments from God," replied the pastor gravely.

"Not that one, and what's more, I am going to talk all I want to, and if
there is a man who does not want to hear, let him go away until he
either changes his mind or desires to take things as they are.... Why!
the women have been speaking in our church for over a year."

At this juncture, Mrs. Graves walked in, pale and weary. She dropped
weakly into a chair.

"Your husband has just informed me," snapped Mrs. Hall, her beautiful
face flushing as she spoke, "that we are not to speak any more at the
church meetings. Do you approve of that, Mrs. Graves? I'm sure--"

"Like all dutiful and obedient wives," came the sharp interruption from
the minister, without giving his sorry-looking spouse a chance to speak,
"my wife thinks as I do. Mrs. Hall, allow me to entreat you to follow
the dictates of your conscience, and obey your husband always."

"My husband gives me my own way," answered Mrs. Hall with a toss of her
head.

"There he is wrong, but I shall leave you to talk things over with my
wife. On Sunday I shall make it the theme of my sermon and I hope before
Wednesday, my dear Mrs. Hall, that you and some others will look upon
the matter in a different light."

The Dominie wended his way toward the business quarter of the city and
turned into the Gas Company's office. Inquiring for Mr. Hall, he was
ushered into a private room marked "President," and heartily greeted one
of the deacons of his church.

"Anything wrong?" asked Hall, noticing the expression upon his pastor's
face.

"No, only I called about a new rule which we're going to pass Wednesday
evening, and you can help us if you will."

The president looked up inquiringly.

"The women must no longer speak at the prayer meeting."

Mr. Hall half rose from his chair as these words fell from the
clergyman's lips, but he sank mutely back.

"It has become necessary to enforce the laws of the church," explained
Graves, "and I have taken up this matter with some of the members--also
with your wife."

Mr. Hall dropped his eyes upon his left hand with the fingers of which
he was bending back those of his right.

"And what did she say?"

"I think it will be necessary for you to talk with her, Hall; surely you
have enough influence over her to make her see that it is absolutely
necessary that women should cease their--"

"I thought, Dominie," broke in the deacon, "that we had long outgrown
such notions. You had better let matters go on as they are."

The minister shook his head emphatically, and looked searchingly at his
parishioner.

"Fact is, Mr. Hall, you know that it is not a personal thing with me,
but for the good of the church. Hopkins has left and Carey only comes
when he feels like it. Several others stay away without a place to
worship, simply because the ladies will have their way. I have no
trouble with my wife and no man would if he were to demand obedience as
God says that he should. I shall preach upon it Sunday."

"Don't make it too strong," ventured Hall, thinking of his beautiful
wife.

As far as he was concerned it made no difference whether women were
silent or not, whether they wore hats to church or came in with bare
heads. He was happy in his home life, and was not willing to bring about
discord by arguments that meant nothing to him. When the church matter
had come up before, he had acquiesced without a word, had watched the
fight as it progressed, and when it ended had settled back to enjoy
peace--a happy official of Ithaca's gas company.

He looked out under his brows at the clergyman, as he fingered the
paper-cutter on his desk. He took it up mechanically and read the
inscription on the handle: "From me to you."

His wife had given it to him, and Hall mentally wondered if the woman
who could think of, and would dare to use, such a unique expression
would be frightened by a word from him.

Without asking Augusta, the husband knew that his wife would be the
first woman to rise to speak next Wednesday evening. This much he
intimated to Graves. An expression of sarcasm flitted over the
clergyman's countenance, but it quickly vanished--Graves was trying to
add to his strong friends that day. He only remarked that he hoped it
would be settled amicably. The president ventured another shot:

"Dominie, there's a complete turn in the affairs of Skinner; he says
that he did not commit the murder--that he positively did not pick up
the gun from the shore. Simply because he owned the gun is no proof that
he used it. Young says--"

"Young had better attend to his campus business," interrupted Graves.
"He will have all he can do. There's no doubt in my mind that Skinner is
guilty. I should have thought that his conviction was proof of that."

"But he didn't have a chance to prove his innocence," replied Hall. "He
has such a good reputation among his own people that Young is going to
take up subscriptions for another trial."

Elias turned sharply upon the gas official.

"Few people who understand the matter will give money to save the life
of a squatter. That's another thing I'm going to preach upon next
Sunday. The very manner in which they live would prove what bad citizens
they are."

"We can't hang a man," argued Hall, "because he doesn't live in
accordance with our stilted notions. Professor Young says that the girl
is a genius--that she has a beautiful voice. I promised that if he took
up--a contribution for the family that I would send him a check."

Elias Graves rose hastily to his feet, forgetting to put out his hand as
he went out. He now hated Tessibel Skinner with a deep religious hatred,
and it would be war between him and her for the life of the imprisoned
squatter.

President Hall, with a smile upon his face, closed the door of his
private office after his pastor had departed.

"It's evident why Graves wants the women turned down," mused he; "he
thinks that he will draw about him again such men as Hopkins and Carey
and that they will help him in removing Skinner from his land. I won't
help persecute the poor devil--Gad, but that daughter of his did turn
things upside down. I wonder what Augusta will say to me when I go
home?"

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a keen, cold and blizzardly Sunday morning when the bells of the
different churches rang out upon the air. Ithaca was astir and her
citizens anxious to worship. For one-half hour the streets teemed with
well-dressed people, then became as silent as if the town were
uninhabited. Minister Graves took his place in the pulpit and scanned
the pews which were filled to overflowing. Not only had his members
come, one and all, but people from other congregations were standing at
the back of the railing, eager to hear the mighty effort which would be
given forth from the clergyman's eloquent tongue. Elias Graves took his
text from Genesis--"And thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall
rule over thee."

The minister leaned far over his flock, as he finished this impressive
text.

His eyes fell upon Deacon Hall's pew, then upon his own in which sat his
wife with Babe near her. Frederick was between Teola and the little
girl, and they were all earnestly watching their father--something was
going to happen, but they did not know what. The deep voice broke out
into a prayer, followed by a soulful anthem from the choir.

Minister Graves rose with dignity, and began his sermon.

"It is my intention," said he, "to divide my sermon this morning
directly in two, because my subjects are so entirely different. Before
the expiration of it, you will see the force of my argument and will, I
hope, profit by it."

He continued by saying, a house divided against itself would surely
fall, that even a stone structure built upon sand would slip into the
sea.

"Brethren, the sea of which I speak is a sea of discontent and
disobedience. From my reading text you will see that God commanded that
woman should be obedient, that she should obey her husband to the
letter--to the letter, brethren."

There was a decided rustle of silken petticoats in the church.

"It was the disobedience of our first mother," spoke the clergyman,
"that threw Adam into ill-repute with his Creator, and also Adam's love
for her that drove him from the Garden of Eden. Brethren, God is good to
mankind, ever ready to listen to his appeals. If Adam had only believed
in the greatness as well as the goodness of God, he would have spurned
the woman who had dared to so flagrantly disobey, instead of following
her from the garden.

"Adam had more than one rib," went on the minister, "and how readily and
kindly would God have disposed of the first sinning Eve and under the
pleasant sleep of the man, Adam, extracted another rib out of which he
would have constructed another and yet more beautiful woman. Some of us
are finding it impossible to keep order in our families, and until we
do, we cannot expect to live to the glory of God."

A loud hacking cough came from Deacon Hall's pew and many heads were
turned toward it. This disconcerted the clergyman for a moment, but he
picked up the threads of his sermon and resumed:

"If every man in this little city would rely upon the goodness of God to
supply him with another Eve, when the woman joined to him in holy
matrimony disobeys His law, it would be a simple matter to re-establish
order in his household. Just as happiness was given to Lot after the
turning to salt of his wife."

The minister paused--the silence was so deathly that it appalled him. He
allowed his eyes to fall upon the memorial window with a man's face upon
it. The words underneath the figure passed before him dimly. Then he
remembered that he was preaching a sermon. Was he not the chosen
shepherd of the flock? Was he not the one man called by God to show
these people the righteous paths in which to walk? Should his voice be
silenced because others did not believe as he did? And was he not
showing them the light through the Scriptures? With these thoughts in
his mind and renewed energy in his voice he spoke again:

"I should be the last man in the world to raise a false alarm, neither
do I desire to enter homes and bring discord there. But I read from a
passage under my hand, 'If thy right hand offend thee cut it off.'

"From the words of the Scriptures I have proven to you that a household
must be ruled by the husband and by him alone. And that it is the duty
of every wife to obey her husband as long as she shall live.

"I shall ask the women of this congregation not to rise next Wednesday
evening in the prayer meeting, either to pray or testify. The privilege
has been withdrawn as one perniciously against the tenets of the
church. For Paul says in first Timothy, 'I suffer not a woman to teach
nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence;' also I give
you Paul's further command, 'Let the deacons be the husband of one wife,
ruling their children and their own houses well.'"

He ran over the last few words quickly for the louder rustle of silk
could be heard. The minister changed his subject and gave them another
text which said that the wicked people of the earth should be cut down.
Was the minister going to sanction the killing of wives who refused to
obey their husbands? Had he lost his mind? But his voice rang out upon
the congregation upon a subject in which they had recently become so
interested.

"There is on our city," said the clergyman, "a terrible blot. The wicked
ones of Jerusalem could not equal them in wickedness.

"The plans of God in keeping peace among his people are to be carried
out to-day, with as much vigor as they were three thousand years ago. I
need not give you the details of a murder committed a short time ago
within the limits of our city. The very fact that the murderer has the
chance of another trial after his conviction demonstrates that something
must be done, and quickly. If the secular law is not able to wipe out
such a blot then the church must help. It is my idea, brethren, that the
weeds of the earth must be cut down, and by weeds I mean bad men. If a
petition is handed you to sign asking time for Orn Skinner, I ask you
one and all not to place your names upon it."

The clergyman suddenly stopped, closing his Bible. "Papa would cut off
Tessibel's father's head if he could, wouldn't he, Frederick," whispered
Babe.

Frederick gave the child a reproving glance and the little girl sank
back after explaining that if Skinner were hung "papa" would have the
land which ought to be his.

But as his father was speaking again the student turned his serious face
toward the pulpit.

"Brethren," finished the pastor impressively, "before I close I would
adjure every one of you to take the reins of his household into his own
hands," and then looking straight at Deacon Hall, he concluded:

"And if you have never had the reins, then I command you to take them
this day and rule your homes as God would have you. 'Let us pray.'"

Augusta Hall made but one remark on her way home from church.

"Wednesday evening, I am going to show Dominie Graves that he can't rule
every woman in Ithaca, and I want you to go with me, dearie."




CHAPTER XVII


Orn Skinner was to be taken to prison the Monday after the famous sermon
preached by Dominie Graves. Professor Young had gained permission for
Tessibel to spend fifteen minutes with Skinner before his departure.
There was something about the fishermaid that touched his heart. Her
ignorance, her devotion to her father, and the loveliness of the anxious
young face haunted the professor during his working hours, and at night,
when he could not sleep, he created plans for her future and her
father's release. He persuaded himself continually that Tessibel was not
the motive for clearing the fisherman of the murder charge, it was the
love of justice--justice to the squatter and his lovely child. Often the
lawyer had set his jaw when he thought of Minister Graves and the
evident malice shown by the parson against the fisherman.

That Monday afternoon he met Tessibel as she came into the jail-yard,
much the same Tessibel he had seen in the court-room.

Professor Young took the girl's hand in his and led her into the small
waiting room of the stone prison. He desired to be alone with her for a
few minutes that he might satisfy himself as to her history, which since
her dramatic entrance into the court-room had been so distorted.

"You have no mother, I understand, my dear," he began.

"Nope," and Tessibel shifted one boot along the seam in the red carpet.

"Do you remember her?"

"Nope; don't remember none but Daddy."

"Have you ever been to school?"

Tessibel shook her head, displaying her teeth in smile which quickly
faded.

"Squatter's brats don't never go to school," she muttered.

She edged away from the professor, raising her eyes pleadingly to his.
The man read the desire the girl dared not put into words, but without
heeding her glance he proceeded to question her.

"Would you like to go to school?"

"Nope, all I want air Daddy home in the shanty. That air enough for me."

She suddenly turned her face away toward the door that led to the upper
cells.

"But if I assure you," urged Professor Young, "that your father will
positively get another trial, which is all that can be done at present,
would you then like to study?"

A definite shake of her head and another quick glance was Tessibel's
answer.

"I wants to read the Bible," she said, presently turning toward the
professor; "it air a dum hard book to read, I hear."

Professor Young tugged at the corners of his mustache to keep down a
smile.

"It would be easy for you to read any book if you went to school," he
told her. "How old are you?"

"Comin' sixteen."

"And cannot read--it's a pity! And wouldn't you like to learn to sing?"

Young was desirous of touching a responsive strain in the girl.

"Dum sight rather see Daddy--that's what I came here for! Ain't ye going
to let me see him?"

Professor Young rose with a sigh. Like the rest of her race, she did not
know gratitude. He had worked diligently, preparing an appeal for a new
trial which would bring acquittal to her humpbacked father, and he was
interested in her own welfare, but her thankless words checked his
inquiry. The professor did not realize what love meant to Tessibel, for
every desire within her paled into insignificance beside her passionate
devotion to Daddy Skinner.

Tess followed him silently up the long winding stairs, her heart
thumping in anticipation. The deputy's search of her clothing brought a
flush to her face, but without a word she allowed him to draw off the
great boots and quietly watched him as he turned them upside down,
receiving them back gravely. Her longing to see Daddy Skinner, to be in
his arms, to hug the grizzled head, overshadowed even this indignity. So
long had it been since Tess had nestled in the shaggy chin hair, that
her heart was sore and wildly impatient. Faith in Frederick's God had
been forgotten--no other thought occupied her mind save that they were
going to take away her beloved--the only one left to her. She deigned
not a glance at Professor Young after the deputy had gone, and measured
the oilcloth-covered floor restlessly with the stamp, stamp, stamp of
the big boots.

Professor Young's presence was no more to her than the small insects
which scurried from the edge of the floor covering into the light and
then back into their hiding places, afraid of the human giants which
loomed up before them. What did she care for reading, writing and such
things. She wanted to be with Daddy Skinner--wanted him home in the
shanty, as of old.

She kept her eyes riveted upon the open door. Suddenly she leaned
forward, for the ominous clanging of irons came to her ears. She thought
of the night she had been found scaling the ivy to Daddy's cell--how
long she had waited in the darkness for only a little word about him.
They had given her none, and her vivid imagination brought back the
anguish of that lonely walk through the storm to the hut.

Approaching footsteps made her alert, and in the paling of the sweet
face Professor Young divined the tumult going on in the tender,
uneducated heart.

"Child," exclaimed he, "don't make your father's going away harder for
him!"

"Shut up," muttered Tess, just as the huge shackled prisoner appeared at
the door.

Every muscle in the strong young body stiffened. Tess had not seen her
father since the trial. Intensity narrowed the eyes, the drooping white
lids covering the lights in the brown iris, the small hands clutched
convulsively. Daddy Skinner--her Daddy--was standing before her, his
blue-gray eyes piercing her very soul from under the long shaggy brows.
She bounded toward him, and two creatures of primeval passion met in one
long embrace. It was the passion of an aboriginal father for his child,
of a primitive girl watching her loved one separate from her through the
portals of death. Tess had lifted herself deftly to the bible-back, and
lowered her head to the grizzled face, the man's large mouth covering
the twitching lips of the girl. The shrouding red hair hid the squatter
faces from the professor, and he turned his eyes away. He could not look
upon them without distressing emotion. The strange maid was an enigma to
him and he found himself wishing that he might guide her future. When
Young glanced again, the fisherman had seated himself and had slipped
Tessibel from his shoulders, gathering her closely into his great
embrace--for she was the brawn of his brawn and the bone of his bone.

Under the squatter's huge red arm, the fisher-girl had wedged her head
tightly, the low brows were taut with pain, the bronze eyes defiantly
closed. Tess was as firmly fixed in her position as the iron chains that
encased her "Daddy's" ankles. She had come to stay with Daddy Skinner,
to go with him where he went, in spite of the great man from the hill,
in spite of the majesty of the law--even in spite of Daddy himself.

The deputy warden with open watch stood over the prisoner with observing
eye. The fifteen minutes allowed the girl were gone, and he slowly
touched the humpback on the shoulder.

"Time's up, Skinner," said he. "Sorry, but it's the law, you know."

Skinner tried to draw the curly head from under his arm but the muscles
in the girl's body only tightened, the white lips grew more rigid.

"It air time fer me to go, Tess," murmured the squatter in her ear.

"I air--I--I air a goin' with ye."

The words were scarcely more than the flutter of a breath. The deputy
warden stepped forward a little, then back to his place by the door; the
professor rose but sank again to his chair; the bible-back of the
fisherman pulsated as if a separate heart was beating in each great
hump. Tess was as immovable as if nature had aided her to grow into her
position. Skinner again tried to loosen the bare red arms.

"Ye can't go to prison with me, Tess," he said coaxingly; "set up like a
good brat ... Daddy'll kiss ye good-bye."

"I air goin'," she insisted. "It air like a dead man's yard without ye
in the shanty.... I can wash dishes. I can do a hull lot if ye'll take
me with ye, Daddy Skinner."

Not one whit less rigid was the slender body, the closed lids only
pressed tighter together.

The deputy grunted impatiently.

"Come, Kid," said he gruffly; "it's the law ye're tamperin' with. Do you
hear? Let the prisoner go."

Professor Young felt his throat tighten. The pitiful sight of the girl,
the ragged skirt, the terrible unkemptness of the small body, almost
brought a shout from his lips. It was a new sensation to the learned
man, a stinging, rebellious, pitying sensation, a feeling that he wanted
to shake the girl from her father's arms, and then care tenderly for
her. One great boot had fallen from Tessibel's many times frozen foot.
The little toe marked and cut by frost, limply hanging independent of
its fellows, made Young wince.

Suddenly Tessibel sat up and wound her arms more tightly about the big
humpbacked body.

"I can't go back to the shanty without ye, Daddy," she whimpered, "and
they said--as how ye was comin'--home to stay.... And I ain't
goin'--darned if I air."

Young turned his head again toward the window. He could not banish the
wish that Tess would listen to him.

The deputy placed his hand firmly upon the prisoner's arm, the fisherman
himself trying in vain to loosen the girl's fingers from the shaggy
beard.

"I--I--air to go with Daddy--I air--I air!"

Tessibel brought out the words snappingly, but Skinner, with the aid of
the deputy, opened the clenched hands. Tessibel gave way; she was unable
to stop the awful impending danger that hung over her--absolute
separation from Daddy Skinner.

"Daddy, Daddy," she gasped, sitting up straight: "man--man, let me go
... I air dyin' without my Daddy ... I air alone--all alone!"

The official moved anxiously as she made this appeal to him. She was now
standing on her bare feet, but she bounded forward as the bible-back
rose and fell, and large tears dragged themselves from the lowered lids
of the fisherman's blue-gray eyes. She pantingly caught her father's
hand in hers.

"Kisses, Daddy Skinner, kisses on the bill for Tess--before ye go ...
Tess air a bad brat--"

She could not finish the sentence for the squatter had pressed her to
him convulsively. Then Skinner dropped the slender, relaxed body into
the wooden arm-chair, and iron-hampered, took up his march behind the
deputy. The professor mutely watched the storm, desperate and terrible,
break over the squatter girl. Her wild weeping settled into sobs, the
sound of which rent and shook the man's emotions. At last he ventured to
speak:

"Child, may I be your friend?"

"'Taint no friends I want. It air somethin' to love--to kiss. It air
Daddy I want."

The voice came brokenly from the veil of red hair.

Just then the great iron door clanged in the distance behind the
prisoner. Tessibel sprang to the open door, straining her ears to catch
another sound from the "black place" which had enveloped her father
within its menacing shadows.

"He air--gone.... Daddy--air--gone!"

The words were spoken slowly, and hurt the watching man almost as if the
torture were his own. A shriek rose from the rounded white throat and
the girl threw herself bootless upon the floor, and screamed in
passionate childish sorrow, the wealth of disheveled hair mantling the
dirty jacket, and covering the woful face.

Neither the professor nor Tessibel heard the hurrying footsteps upon the
stone floor in the prison corridor, but Tess, still in the frenzy of her
new grief, heard her name spoken through a maze:

"Tessibel Skinner!" And then again: "Tessibel Skinner!"

The squatter raised a pale, tear-streaked face to Frederick Graves. She
sat up with a painful flush, drawing the bare legs closely under the wet
skirt. The student spoke again:

"Tessibel Skinner has forgotten that God rules and is just. Have your
prayers proven nothing to you?"

Tessibel gazed scarlet and embarrassed, into Frederick's face, her under
lip quivering. The red head sank slowly down, and the exhausted child
wept as only a hurt child can weep.

"I were a-goin' with him," she cried between her sobs, "I could have
washed dishes in the prison--to be near Daddy. I air such a lonely Tess
'out him in the hut."

The student lifted her gently in his arms and seated her in the wooden
chair. With the tenderness of a brother, he placed the great boots once
more upon the girl's feet, and Tessibel was ready to start again upon
her long tramp through the row of huts to her shanty home.

The tears had ceased to flow, and with bowed head she was hanging upon
every word the student uttered. Professor Young went quietly out,
unheeded by either girl or boy.

"No one blames you for your grief, child, at being obliged to leave your
father," Frederick said huskily. "But are

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