She shook her head.
"Nope."
She was not disloyal to Teola in saying this.
"I have offered you all the help a man can give to another human being." Here his voice broke a little. "All I have offered to do for you, you have refused. Now, if you want me to continue to help your father, you are to tell me whose child it is."
Before the vivid mind of the girl rose the handsome, manly face of the student. Her labor for the child and its mother had been wholly for Frederick's sake--not for anything in the world would she have consented to do what she had done, if it had not been to save him pain.
"Well, 'tain't mine," she drawled after a time, "and it ain't belonging to anyone ye know. It air only a brat what ain't nothin' but a grape-basket to sleep in. And now ye says that if I wants my Daddy saved from the rope, I must tell yer whose it air. I says it ain't mine. And I says as how ye knows a new little bloke when ye sees one. Here it air! And if ye don't know that it ain't mine, then ye air a bigger fool lawyer than I thinks ye air."
She was speaking rapidly, and had again slipped the cover from the babe, lifting it from its bed. The fire scar was uppermost, and the loud smacking of the half-naked child caused the man to sink into his seat. The blood-red cheeks of the squatter denoted perfect health. The eyes were wide, confiding and entreating. Young held out his hands and took it from her. Then, for the second time in her life, Tess noted emotion in a man. Once in Daddy Skinner, in the jail--she had given way before it. And now in the strong friend of her father, who laid his face on the body of the infant, and sobbed.
In an instant Tess was on her knees before him.
"Air ye a-blattin' 'cause ye thinks it air my brat? Aw, ye knows it ain't. Ye knows I air but a-takin' care of it till its ma can. If I swears by the student's God, will ye believe?"
Young rose, white and nervous, from his chair. With tender fingers he placed the little one in the receptacle, set the rag securely between its lips, and turned to Tess.
"I believe you, child," he said wearily. "I thought at first--oh, it was an awful thought for me ... because I love you, Tessibel."