The Secret of the Storm Country

The bitter winter wind nipped at Young as he strode down the steps and battled his way to the stables. Waldstricker's words were pounding at his brain like a hammer. What had they done to Tess? He remembered Ebenezer had said that his vote--his own delegated vote--had turned the tide against his pretty child!

He had no mercy for the stumbling horse as he spurred down the long drive, into the public thoroughfare, and thence to the shore road. When he came opposite to his own closed, uninhabited house, he could see by straining his eyes the dusky shadow of the willow trees shrouding the Skinner home.

A glimmer of light struggled from the curtained window of the hut. With desperate haste he tied his horse to the fence post. He could scarcely stop to spread over the animal the blanket he'd brought for the purpose.

Then as he waded through the snow and rounded the mud cellar a dog's mournful howling, pierced and punctuated by a girl's shrill, heart-broken cry, fell upon his startled ears. In another minute he had flung himself against the shanty door and forced it open. Kennedy's bulldog greeted him, growling, and beyond him, stretched out upon the body of her dead father, lay Tess. Hovering over her, chattering, was Andy Bishop, the dwarf, the condemned murderer of Ebenezer Waldstricker, Sr.