Tess of the Storm Country

"What are you going to do?" asked the student. "You lived here with your father, but you can't stay here alone."

"It air my home," she said distrustfully, "and I stays here and hangs to this here shanty till Daddy comes back. Aw, he air comin' back, ain't he? He won't go to that place--?"

She closed her lips, fearing to utter the thought.

Frederick shook his head.

"Poor child," he said, with a fatherly air. "It is a dangerous position."

If the case had been placed before Frederick Graves to decide, yesterday he would have hanged Orn Skinner for the murder of the gamekeeper. But to-night--well, to-night his ideas of men and ... of women, too, had changed.

"But he didn't mean it," went on Tess, casting back the unruly hair which shrouded her face in its new state of cleanliness. "He wouldn't have hurt a fly, Daddy Skinner wouldn't."

A whistle from the outside, heard plainly through the beating of the wind, caused Frederick to fling open the door.

"Yes, father," he said loudly, "I'm here. I missed you on the way. Come in a moment if you will."

Tessibel gathered herself more closely into a small human ball than ever. She had feared the minister since the time she had talked off his warts with the wizard words she had learned from a hag living on the ragged rocks.

"What's this," demanded the Dominie, looking sternly at her, and she dropped her eyes in confusion.

"It's Orn Skinner's girl," replied his son. "Skinner is the man who shot Stebbins to-night. You heard Deacon Hall talking about it at the cottage."

This explanation was superfluous, for the minister well knew the girl and her father.

"It's a nice mess your father's got himself into," he said harshly.

Tessibel lifted her head.

"He didn't mean to do it, sir," she replied, not daring to rise, because of her bare, long legs.

"Didn't, eh?" roared Graves in his wrath, placing his hand on his son's shoulder. "He was right glad to have the chance to use his gun, or why did he take it with him?"

Tessibel raised her eyes to the rafters, and her face flooded with color. The rifle was gone--Daddy Skinner had taken it with him. She was too young to argue with such a man and only wiped her face with her sleeve and sobbed.

"God will see that justice is done, my girl. Your father will hang, do you hear?" shouted Graves. "Hang by the neck till he's dead, and this shanty will be burned with all its filth!"