The words were scarcely more than the flutter of a breath. The deputy warden stepped forward a little, then back to his place by the door; the professor rose but sank again to his chair; the bible-back of the fisherman pulsated as if a separate heart was beating in each great hump. Tess was as immovable as if nature had aided her to grow into her position. Skinner again tried to loosen the bare red arms.
"Ye can't go to prison with me, Tess," he said coaxingly; "set up like a good brat ... Daddy'll kiss ye good-bye."
"I air goin'," she insisted. "It air like a dead man's yard without ye in the shanty.... I can wash dishes. I can do a hull lot if ye'll take me with ye, Daddy Skinner."
Not one whit less rigid was the slender body, the closed lids only pressed tighter together.
The deputy grunted impatiently.
"Come, Kid," said he gruffly; "it's the law ye're tamperin' with. Do you hear? Let the prisoner go."
Professor Young felt his throat tighten. The pitiful sight of the girl, the ragged skirt, the terrible unkemptness of the small body, almost brought a shout from his lips. It was a new sensation to the learned man, a stinging, rebellious, pitying sensation, a feeling that he wanted to shake the girl from her father's arms, and then care tenderly for her. One great boot had fallen from Tessibel's many times frozen foot. The little toe marked and cut by frost, limply hanging independent of its fellows, made Young wince.
Suddenly Tessibel sat up and wound her arms more tightly about the big humpbacked body.
"I can't go back to the shanty without ye, Daddy," she whimpered, "and they said--as how ye was comin'--home to stay.... And I ain't goin'--darned if I air."
Young turned his head again toward the window. He could not banish the wish that Tess would listen to him.
The deputy placed his hand firmly upon the prisoner's arm, the fisherman himself trying in vain to loosen the girl's fingers from the shaggy beard.
"I--I--air to go with Daddy--I air--I air!"
Tessibel brought out the words snappingly, but Skinner, with the aid of the deputy, opened the clenched hands. Tessibel gave way; she was unable to stop the awful impending danger that hung over her--absolute separation from Daddy Skinner.
"Daddy, Daddy," she gasped, sitting up straight: "man--man, let me go ... I air dyin' without my Daddy ... I air alone--all alone!"
The official moved anxiously as she made this appeal to him. She was now standing on her bare feet, but she bounded forward as the bible-back rose and fell, and large tears dragged themselves from the lowered lids of the fisherman's blue-gray eyes. She pantingly caught her father's hand in hers.