During that evening, Deforest Young was calling upon Deacon Hall. He refused the Deacon's invitation to row him to the city.
"Thanks," said he, "but the night is delightful. I think I shall walk. I shall go by the shore and skirt to the tracks at the Hoghole."
He failed to say, however, that his reason for walking was that he desired to catch a glimpse of the red-haired Tess. He had not seen her since the discovery of the new-born babe.
The candle was lighted in the Skinner hut, and he tapped gently. For an instant there was no response, He knew the girl was at home--there had been a sudden discontinuance of a humming when he knocked.
"Miss Skinner, it is I--Professor Young," he called. "If it is too late, I will come again."
The door was promptly thrown open.
"Come in," said Tess with a smile. "I thought as how it were someone else."
"I have been at Deacon Hall's," explained he. "They agree with me that you ought to go and see your father. I did not tell them why you could not. Where is the little child?"
Tess glanced at the babe.
"I keeps him in the basket or the box in the daytime, but nights I takes him to bed with me. The rats be so dum thick that one of them big fellers would chew the little chap's ear offen him afore I could stop it."
She said it so naturally, as if she were speaking of the most ordinary thing, that Young felt a hysterical desire to laugh. It was a dreadful thought, this of the rat in the box with the babe.
"Are the men netting to-night?" he asked, quickly changing the subject.
"Yep, they be."
"I suppose there is no stopping it," sighed Young; "and they run such dreadful risks. But, if there were no laws about it, there would be no fish left in the lake."
Tessibel's brow gathered a thick network of wrinkles. She had heard the subject discussed and argued from her babyhood days. The best fish in the waters must be kept for the gentlemen who came for sport during the season. But the fishermen, who needed bread for their families, were forced by the law to go without.
"There oughtn't to be no laws about fishin'," she frowned, in decision. "It air wicked, when brats air a-wantin' bread and beans."
Young saw danger ahead in the argument, so he switched to the home-coming of the minister's family. From that he again spoke of the infant, who was whimpering a little. Tess took him up, and warmed the milk.