"It hit some place near here," said Tess.
"Yes, and wasn't it awful? Oh, if the storm would only cease!"
"It air comin' nearer," answered Tess, with the keen instincts of a squatter. "It air got to turn sidewise through the window afore it goes over the hill. What air ye afraid of, if ye believes that ye can move a mountain if ye has the faith? God wouldn't hit the brat with lightnin', would He?"
"Oh, I haven't the faith, Tess!" moaned Teola, rocking to and fro in her keen agony of soul. "Long ago I stopped believing the way I did when I was a child. I prayed that night when Dan was killed, until my head ached and pounded for days. I wanted to see him once more, and God wouldn't let me; and then I prayed again--" Teola buried her face in the breast of the infant, and sobbed, "I prayed that the baby might die when he was born, but God didn't see fit to take him. Somehow, it doesn't do any good to pray any more."
Tess paused in her work, standing with her hands on her hips, a solemn expression in the long eyes.
"Yer faith wasn't as big as a speck of dirt, then, were it?" she queried. "And maybe mine ain't for Daddy. But the student air a-prayin' for him! It air a damn shame ye ain't got him a-prayin' for yerself and the kid.... Ye'd a seen yer man before now, and the brat would 'a' died, too."
With a start caused by the squatter's words, Teola laid the child down, crouching back upon her feet. She eyed the fisher-girl critically. What a strange mixture of good and bad--of the holy and the unholy--lived in the tawny, magnificent squatter! She answered hesitatingly: "But if my brother should know about the baby, it would break my heart, Tessibel. It would kill me--and him, too! Nothing could ever make me tell him. You understand, don't you, Tess?"
"Yep."
It was as Tess had said. The storm was coming nearer, sending vivid shafts of lightning in splendid awfulness across the sky. Torrents of rain descended, thrashing the lake into uneven, towering crests of white foam. The weeping willow tree groaned over the shanty roof, jarring and tearing at the broken bits of tarred tin.
"Tess, Tess, how can you bear that awful noise, constantly through the night? It frightens me to death. It sounds like the spirits of people who are dead."