Oh! to be out once more in the darkness with the child--out among God's creatures, her creatures, there she would be safe--safe from Myra's terror.
Glancing back at little Dan, she saw his large gray eyes fixed gravely upon the candlelight. To leave him there was like sending him into the jaws of death. To take him was impossible. She turned back, closed the door with a gasp, and faced Ben Letts.
He was at her side in a moment.
"I air got ye now," sounded in her ear like the roar of the sea. She felt the man crush her in his arms, felt the thick lips upon her face.
"Ye think ye be such a smart kid that ye needn't never mind what a man says to ye. I knows that brat don't belong to yerself. I ain't seed ye all summer for nothin'. Tell me, whose air he?"
Tess wrenched herself free, and sent forth scream after scream. A horny hand left a red mark across the fair face. It was the right of the fisherman to beat the woman he loved.... Tessibel Skinner was feeling for the first time the aggressiveness of the male.
"Ben, Ben, I tells ye the truth if ye wait a minute."
Ben relaxed his hold a little, and the girl continued: "The brat ain't mine--it air a woman's on the hill. She didn't like it, and gave it to me, with a little money, till Daddy comes back."
"Whose brat air it?"
"A woman's I says, a-livin' on the hill."
The words struggled through the fishy hand.
"Ye'll take it back to her to-night, ye does; then ye comes with me to the shanty. Yer Daddy ain't a-comin' here no more."
Suddenly Tess heard footsteps crushing the pebbles near the hut. She could be saved, if she-- She wrenched her face upward, and screamed, "Rescue ther perishin'!"
The words were sent out in such a strain of agony that Ben Letts thrust his fingers to her throat. With an oath he closed them together.
"I loves ye, ye hussy; that air why I chokes ye!"
The room whirled around before Tessibel's gaze. She tried to draw her breath beneath the tightening grasp. The door burst open, and Frederick Graves received a desperate look of entreaty from the squatter-girl.