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 herfather 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 mutilatedbody 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 againTessibel 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 backthe 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 arguewith 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—thewild 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 slungthem 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 seeye 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—theloneliness 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 getthat 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 porchwaiting 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 beyondthe 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 thefather'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 silland 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 bearedfor 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.