Tess of the Storm Country

That first day of waiting seemed interminably long, but Tess spent it happily, for ever vividly into her mind came the words of Frederick the student--that God would hear, and answer.

Day by day her faith in the efficacy of her petitions had grown upon her. In spite of the fact that she had been caught by Daddy's enemies in her nightly scrambles up the ivy at the jail, God had answered in letting her see her father so many times at the end of her midnight walks.

* * * * * Three men of squatter's row staggered through the storm up the Lehigh Valley tracks. They passed the line of huts, making an occasional comment upon the inhabitants of some lighted shanty.

It was the evening of the second of November, the first day of Orn Skinner's trial. The squatters had turned out in great numbers to see how the humped prisoner looked before his condemnation, for all believed that the fisherman would hang. It would be establishing a new precedent if Skinner were acquitted--and Ithaca never established new precedents with squatters.

So mused the men as they sullenly toiled toward home, each satisfied in his heart that, if Skinner went the way of others from the row, it would be but another act of revenge upon the part of the townspeople, for had not one and every witness save Elias Graves testified that day to the good character of the accused man?

The headlight of a locomotive sent them to the side track.

"Orn's face were yaller'n saffron, wern't it, when Minister Graves said as how he were a cussed pap of a cusseder gal," said Ezy Longman to Jake Brewer and Ben Letts.

"He were that mad," agreed Letts, "that the humps on his back just riz up and down--he were that mad he were."

"But it were screechin' funny when the jedge made the parson speak out what Tess done," laughed Jake Brewer.

"You bet," assented Ezry Longman. "But why weren't she there to-day?"

"Don't know," answered Jake. "She were home, I guess. She 'lows as how her Daddy comes home to-morry ... I 'lows as how he don't."

"I 'lows it, too," grunted Ben Letts.

They walked on in silence for some time, the wind crooning its endless tune through the telegraph wires. As they passed Kennedy's, Pete, the brindle bulldog, howled in rage at not being able to attack the squatters. The dog snapped viciously at all strangers--and more than this would he have done if he had had an opportunity to reach Ben Letts and Ezra Longman. These men had spared neither stones nor sticks, in times past, to arouse the dog's ire; and Pete never forgot an enemy.