"Kisses, Daddy Skinner, kisses on the bill for Tess--before ye go ... Tess air a bad brat--"
She could not finish the sentence for the squatter had pressed her to him convulsively. Then Skinner dropped the slender, relaxed body into the wooden arm-chair, and iron-hampered, took up his march behind the deputy. The professor mutely watched the storm, desperate and terrible, break over the squatter girl. Her wild weeping settled into sobs, the sound of which rent and shook the man's emotions. At last he ventured to speak: "Child, may I be your friend?"
"'Taint no friends I want. It air somethin' to love--to kiss. It air Daddy I want."
The voice came brokenly from the veil of red hair.
Just then the great iron door clanged in the distance behind the prisoner. Tessibel sprang to the open door, straining her ears to catch another sound from the "black place" which had enveloped her father within its menacing shadows.
"He air--gone.... Daddy--air--gone!"
The words were spoken slowly, and hurt the watching man almost as if the torture were his own. A shriek rose from the rounded white throat and the girl threw herself bootless upon the floor, and screamed in passionate childish sorrow, the wealth of disheveled hair mantling the dirty jacket, and covering the woful face.
Neither the professor nor Tessibel heard the hurrying footsteps upon the stone floor in the prison corridor, but Tess, still in the frenzy of her new grief, heard her name spoken through a maze: "Tessibel Skinner!" And then again: "Tessibel Skinner!"
The squatter raised a pale, tear-streaked face to Frederick Graves. She sat up with a painful flush, drawing the bare legs closely under the wet skirt. The student spoke again: "Tessibel Skinner has forgotten that God rules and is just. Have your prayers proven nothing to you?"
Tessibel gazed scarlet and embarrassed, into Frederick's face, her under lip quivering. The red head sank slowly down, and the exhausted child wept as only a hurt child can weep.
"I were a-goin' with him," she cried between her sobs, "I could have washed dishes in the prison--to be near Daddy. I air such a lonely Tess 'out him in the hut."
The student lifted her gently in his arms and seated her in the wooden chair. With the tenderness of a brother, he placed the great boots once more upon the girl's feet, and Tessibel was ready to start again upon her long tramp through the row of huts to her shanty home.
The tears had ceased to flow, and with bowed head she was hanging upon every word the student uttered. Professor Young went quietly out, unheeded by either girl or boy.