Tess blinked her eyes as if she were looking into a powerful sun. The strong form of the lawyer was bending over her. She lifted her face to his, not realizing the greatness of his love. She only knew that he was her friend--Daddy's friend. She grasped his hands in hers, kissed them tearfully, and took up the basket.
"I were a-goin' with ye on Thursday, but I can't now. Thank ye for believin' me, and I'll work as hard as ye says I must, and if I air a bad brat, then I air sorry."
She had gone out, crying bitterly, before he could say another word; but a happier feeling was in his heart than had been for many weeks. She had promised to work, and in that promise had failed, for the first time, to utter the name of Frederick Graves.
* * * * * "Tess air a-gettin' stylish," said Mrs. Longman, rattling the newspaper one Sunday morning. "Her name air right here, in print."
"What do it say, Mammy?" asked Ezra, lighting his pipe with a piece of burning paper.
"As how Tessie air a-goin' to see her Daddy, with the big man on the hill."
Ben Letts shoved his big boots from one side to the other, plainly disturbed by the news.
"Folks on the hill air a-doin' better if they minds their own business, I air a-sayin'," grumbled he. "There ain't no reason why Orn Skinner can't go dead, like other squatters has before him."
His red bandana handkerchief sought the blurred blue eye. A pair of pale gray ones from above the smoking pipe of Ezra Longman settled upon Ben Lett's face, with a tightening of the thick lids.
"Tessibel air so sure that her father air innocent that I hopes they prove it," Myra Longman said, trundling her babe to and fro, in the huge wooden rocker.
"There be some folks as knows more than they'll tell," put in Ezra, keeping his eyes upon the squatter Ben.
"And there air folks what thinks they knows a dum sight more than they can prove," replied Ben.
The great white eye jerked open, the crossed blue one twisting to bring Ezra Longman within its vision.
An expression of deadening hate flashed for a moment across the red face, and the white eye closed again. Myra had seen the by-play, and sat up with a gasp. What was there between Ben and her brother?
Placing the child upon her mother's lap, she stirred the stew bubbling in the pot on the stove.