"Take hold of my hand," she ordered. "It air the trestle. It air a long one and the steps be far apart."
Without a demurring word, Frederick grasped the strong fingers she held out to him. A smile, obscured by the darkness, played about the girl's sensitive mouth. The young body was pulsing with life--with intense gratitude, for was not she, Tessibel Skinner, helping her friend? With halting steps the boy and girl commenced the most perilous part of their journey, Tessibel leading the way. The student stopped in the middle of the long trestle.
"Are we nearly over?" he asked in a low voice. The awful magnificence of the dark night, the rushing water tumbling and roaring over the rocks beneath them, awed him into what was almost timidity.
"Nope; come on, don't stop here," urged Tess. "'Taint a good place."
At the end of the gap Tess tried to draw her hand away, but it was a feeble motion and she ceased as she noted that Frederick was still clinging to it.
"Let me walk with your hand in mine," he said simply with no extra pressure of the fingers within his. "It is dark for us both."
During the rest of the journey a silence fell upon them. Kennedy's brindle bull, scenting a friend, capered madly for a word from Tess, but the squatter paid no heed to her dog chum.
She took her hand from Frederick's to unfasten the door and light the candle. While they were walking the tracks, the woman in her had tried to remember in what condition she had left the hut. She looked about hastily. Before lighting another candle she smuggled the frying pan from the floor and picked up the loaf of bread that had fallen behind the stove from the table. While Tessibel lighted the fire, Frederick sat huddled in the wooden rocking-chair, still wrapped in the crimson altar-cloth, and watched the girl, who, as she moved clumsily to and fro, uttered no sound save now and then a characteristic grunt. Instinct told the squatter that she would choke the sensitive throat of the student if she raised the dust by sweeping and she refrained from using a broom, but Frederick wished vaguely that she would gather up the fish bones and crumbs of bread from her path that they might not crunch so audibly under her heavy boots. An open Bible placed on Daddy Skinner's stool attracted his attention in his survey of the room. Through the flickering light he could see the passages Tessibel had marked. He must say something or his brain would burst.