Tess of the Storm Country

* * * * * "Be ye better now?" asked Tess, trying to stand Teola on her feet.

"I am dreadfully ill yet," was the whispered answer. "But I want to see my baby.... And what shall I do with him? Oh, what shall I do?"

"He air a-sleepin' now," replied the squatter. "And he stays here with me, ye hear? Ye can't take him to yer pa's house, and the hut air good enough for him to live in, if it was good enough for him to be borned in."

"You mean, Tessibel, that you will care for my baby, until I can arrange something for him?--So that my father and mother may not know--"

"Er the student," broke in Tess.

"My brother! Tess, my brother Frederick! He must not know. It would kill him--and me. You, Tess,--you swear that you won't tell him?"

"I ain't a-tellin' him nothin'. I swears it, ye hear? I swears I won't tell the student nothin' about the little kid."

"Of course you won't," answered Teola weakly. "I trust you, Tessibel."

There was a deep questioning in the squatter girl's eyes as they rested upon the quiet bundle on the foot of the bed. How could a mother leave her child in the care of a stranger?--leave him in a squatter's hut, where the rats scurried hungrily about the floor, and the bats fluttered among the ceiling rafters!

"Don't look like that, Tessibel!" Teola burst in. "You understand, don't you, that I can't tell them?--that I can't take him home? My brother loves me better than any other person in the world, and I love him as much as he does me."

The blood suffused the drawn face to the hair line.

"And I want to see my baby before I go," she pleaded.

Tess shook her shoulders, and hesitated awkwardly.

"He air to sleep.... And ye ain't no business a-wakin' him up, nuther."

Suddenly a dread flashed into Teola's mind.

"Tessibel, he is.... There is something the matter with him!" She was fully dressed, tremblingly holding the post of the bed for support. "There is something the matter with him!" she gasped again.

"Nothin' that air a-hurtin' him," soothed Tess. "He air marked with the fire what killed his pa, that air all.... See, t'ain't much."

She lifted the babe from the bed and held him up. The covering dropped from the shoulder, exposing the brilliant scar.