Tess of the Storm Country

Teola had coveted the chance to tell him of the little human link between Dan Jordan's life and hers. She raised herself on her pillow, the long hair mantling her shoulders and aureoling the death-like face.

"Father," she gasped. "Father! Let me tell you something about Tessibel Skinner. No! Don't put your fingers over my lips! Don't! Don't! Listen."

"Teola," interjected Graves gravely, "if you want to displease me--"

"She's so lonely," broke in the girl, her courage ebbing away under the bent brows of her father. "I thought--you--might help her."

"Go to sleep," replied the minister, "there's a good girl!... Good-night."

For a moment, Teola lay panting nervously. She had been so near the confession, so near telling her father about the little babe in the shanty. She slipped out of bed to the window. The wind still flung the dead leaves, whirling them to and fro in the orchard like willful spirits. The night had darkened until, to Teola, shivering and ill, it seemed alive with shadowy goblins which mocked at her.

She could just make out the dark line of the hut under the willow branches. A candlelight flickered a moment in the window, and was gone. Teola moaned long, muttering loving messages to the child cuddled in Tessibel's arms. She loved it, but could not bring it home--yet! At last sleep, a deep, fatigued sleep, enveloped her. She was too tired to dream.

After Tess was alone, she made ready for bed. The child whimpered drowsily. The squatter lifted it up with infinite tenderness, binding the rags more closely about the scrawny body.

"Ye don't amount to as much as the tuft on Kennedy's mare's tail," she said aloud. "Eat now, I says, or I opens yer mouth and pours it full."

The words, gathered from the vocabulary of the squatter, were harsh, but the emotion in the tones softened them.

"Ye air a-dyin' 'cause ye won't eat, kid, and ye have the smell of a dead rat, too. Yer lips be that blue--and yer mouth air like a baby-bird's.... Eat, I says, damn ye.... Will ye swallow that?"

She held the withered lips open, and filled the cavity with warm milk.

"Eat, I says," crooned the girl; "eat, and Tess takes ye tight--like this--and the rats can't bite ye, or the ghosts get ye till ye air dead. Tess loves ye, ye poor little brat."

The child, strangling for breath, gulped down a mouthful of milk, but the jaws set again, and the lips settled into a blue line. Tess prepared the sugar rag, putting in a large amount of sweet, and dipped it in the tea-pan in which she had warmed the milk. Then she allowed a little of the syrup to fall upon the lips. The mouth snapped upon it, and long after Tess had gathered the infant into her arms the smacking went on and on, until both slept. Neither heard the wind that rattled the hut boards, that rasped its endless sawing on the tin roof; neither heard the willow branches brushing to and fro against the rickety chimney. The child slept the sleep of a human creature moving silently toward death; and Tess the sleep of the exhausted.