"Oh, Goddy, Goddy!" she breathed, catching her breath in stifling sobs. "The student air gone, and the Bible air burnt, and Daddy air in a prison cell. Might'n I asks ye--?"
She turned, with heaving bosom, without finishing. Bending over the child, she drew him into her arms. With the same sublime expression of suffering, she went back to the open door and knelt in the beating rain, and tendered the little child toward the God of her dreams.
"Might'n it please ye, Goddy, to bless the brat--and Tess?"
The student was no longer the motive power of her prayer. Tess, the squatter, was struggling with a new faith of her own. Flash after flash brightened the sky, and still she knelt, offering the sick child for her God to bless. One long peal of thunder shook the inky waters, and rumbled reverberatingly into the hills. Tessibel's eyes were riveted upon the pine-tree. The wind dropped the shaking branches for a minute--the arms extended straight toward her. With fast-falling tears she bowed over the wailing baby, and stood up with a long breath.
"Goddy, Goddy, it air hard work for ye to forgive Tessibel, I knows.... To-day I loved the student best"--a sob tightened her throat--"to-night I love you best, and ... and the Man hanging on the Cross."
She closed the hut door, and seated herself at the oven, and warmed the infant with tender solicitude, forcing the warm, sweetened water into the meager body. Then she slipped off her clothes, gathered the little Dan to her breast, and crept into bed.
"I said as how I hated ye, brat," she whispered, "but I don't hate ye now, poor little shiverin' dum devil!"
During the rest of the storm the babe slept, but Tessibel wept out her loss of the only love she had ever known save Daddy Skinner's--wept until, from sheer exhaustion, her head dropped upon the dark one of Dan Jordan's babe, and she slept.
* * * * * The next morning, Tess rose languidly. Without a smile or a prayer, she arranged the sop for the babe, then sat down beside him to think. Such a radical change in her life brought an influx of indescribable emotions. Her Bible was gone--the one book out of which she was learning the secret of happiness and patience. She remembered how, the night before, the realization of her despair had brought her closer to the Cross. Out of the brightness of the lightning she had received a promise of a blessing. Still, the tender, sensitive heart was bleeding for its own. But Tess had the hidden God to help her--and the child. She sat watching him; she could see that he was growing thinner, growing more emaciated as the days passed. He could eat only the food Tess forced into his mouth. But the sugar rags kept him from whining. At this moment he was eying the window-pane with intelligent intentness.