The Secret of the Storm Country

"If you could only ... tell me ... something," he groaned.

"It air true what Mr. Waldstricker hit me fer," bowed Tess, swallowing hard, "but I can't say nothin' 'bout it, I can't! I ain't able to tell nothin' more'n that!"

Young still stood several feet from her.

"I must do something to help you," he implored. "Won't you even tell me when it--it will be, Tessibel?"

Through her tense fingers the girl murmured a stifled "March."

March--scarce three months away! He would have given five years of his life to have had her tell him the truth about this thing that had crushed her. He made a nervous movement with his fingers to his hair.

"You are bound by a promise?" he demanded sharply.

A white, uplifted, pained face was his answer.

"You'll tell me some day, if you can," he said, going swiftly to her.

"Yes," whispered Tess.

And then for a long time nothing was heard in the hut but the winter without, the growls and mutterings of the bulldog in his sleep by the stove, and a sob now and then from the dwarf in the garret.

The healing silence of a common love in the presence of a common grief settled upon the strangely matched couple. The little squatter girl, with her shameful secret, and the great lawyer and teacher, kept solemn vigil over the body of Daddy Skinner.

* * * * * Daddy Skinner was buried. All the arrangement in connection with the obsequies devolved upon Professor Young. It was he who brought the girl back to the shanty in her simple, clinging, black gown, and after the carriage had delivered them at the hut door, carried her, almost unconscious, into the house and laid her gently upon her bed. Then he closed the door and sat down beside her. It was perhaps an hour later when she lifted her eyes appealingly.

"I air awful glad ye stayed with me," she choked.

"Tess,"--Young's voice shook.... "Will you let me talk to you a little and not feel I'm intruding upon your sorrows or your secrets?"

"Ye wouldn't do anythin' what wasn't right," murmured the girl, under her breath.

For some moments he smoothed her burning forehead. Then he lifted her hand and held it in his.

"Tessibel," he began.

"What?"

"First, tell me about the little man in the garret."

"There ain't nothin' much to tell," she responded, shaking her head. "When he got out of Auburn, he come here and asked me an' Daddy to take care of 'im, an' we done it, that air all."

"I see, dear--and--and you didn't think the law required you to give him up?"