The Secret of the Storm Country

"Don't, Andy, you--you hurt me ..." moaned Tess. "Don't!"

"An' I wanted to help ye, sweet," insisted Andy. "But still, I air askin' ye to listen to the rest. Will ye?"

Tess acquiesced silently, her hand falling away from her white, drawn face.

"An' Jesus says to the woman in baby trouble like yours, he says, 'Poor soul, I ain't blamin' ye this day, I ain't!'"

The little man's eyes shone with the sublimity of the truth he was imparting, and an uplifted expression of faith settled on his features. The baby whimpered in his arms, and loosening his hold upon the girl's hand, he rose to his feet carefully. Tessibel was crying now, in low caught breaths that wrenched and tore at Andy's heart cruelly.

To soothe the child, he pattered to and fro upon the shanty floor; and when he began to chant in a low, sweet voice that old, old precious hymn, "Rescue the Perishin';" Tess cried out again. Andy Bishop, the dwarf, was impressing upon Tessibel Skinner's heart that mysterious faith she'd known so long, that same sense of God's love which she'd taught him in those days when the dark doors of Auburn Prison yawned wide for him.

The state had branded him a murderer, but here, with glistening eyes, he preached the Christ and Him crucified. In the solitude of the garret, he had learned his lesson well ... by the dim attic light, he had studied the story of the forgiveness of sin. Suddenly, he ceased his song, and as he trotted back and forth, swaying the little child in his arms, Tessibel caught murmured words, "'Nuther do I condemn thee," said Jesus. "Nuther do I condemn thee," said he.

And in that next pulsing minute through the eyes of her soul, the watching girl saw above the squat dwarf the shadowy image of the smiling Christ, and unspeakable peace descended upon her like a benediction. The lines of suffering vanished from about her pursed mouth. The hurt within her heart gave way to the "still waters."

"'Nuther do I condemn thee,' said Jesus Christ," whispered Andy over the boy's face, and "neither do I condemn thee" sank into the very being of the squatter girl as warm rain sinks to the heart of a parched flower.

She followed the waddling figure, a gleam of gratitude beaming in her eyes. Surely, the bread Tessibel Skinner had cast upon the waters of Andy Bishop's stormy life was returning after many weary days!

"Andy," she called. "Andy, dear, bring me my baby."

The dwarf laid the sleeping child within its mother's arms.

"The man on the cross, your man an' mine, brat," he whispered, "said, 'If ye have burdens, come an' I'll rest ye.' Didn't he say it, kid?"