Tess stared at him blankly.
"Squatter's brats don't have no names.... Ye can't do me any harm."
"Oh, yes, I could," insisted Frederick. "What if that scoundrel who was here a little while ago should say that I were here?... It would harm us both."
Tess paused in her breakfast preparations long enough to say simply, "Yer Christ wouldn't let him harm ye, would He?"
The boy swept her with an incredulous glance.
Did she so thoroughly have faith in a miraculous interference in human affairs by divine power? The delicate face was lighted with exquisite coloring which came and went in the morning light like the tints of a sea-shell. The bright trustful eyes were shining into his, every motion of the lovely head and body bespeaking the blind faith in which the squatter girl lived. Frederick found himself wishing impetuously with all his soul that he could command a faith like hers. His own seemed so dead, so unlike a living faith that he sighed as he turned toward her.
"Tessibel," he said honestly, "you are a better girl than I am a boy ... I am learning many things from you." Then, looking up with a smile after a moment's thought, he finished: "No, I believe with you, that it is impossible for him to harm one of us if we have faith in God."
"So, I can help ye to-morry if ye ain't in Daddy's fix?"
Then Frederick understood that she would have saved him, even if he had been in danger of his life.
"Yes," he replied, "you can aid me.... Do you know where my fraternity is?"
Tess shook her head with a troubled expression.
"I can tell you where it is! I want you to go there and ask for Dan Jordan and tell him I am here. You must speak to no one else about me, or they will come and take me away, and I told you I would almost rather die than not be with my class at the banquet."
Tessibel's spirits rose high. She could help him--after all.
"How air ye goin' to get into the place where ye eats without gettin' took again?"
A flashing intelligence leaped into the brown eyes during her question.
"I knows how I can help ye." She lowered her voice and began to describe the escape and the final fulfillment of their plan.
Frederick chuckled when she had finished.
"That's capital. You tell Dan Jordan, then, to-morrow what you have told me. You see the banquet takes place to-morrow night."