The Secret of the Storm Country

Tessibel and Jake Brewer made their way through the bleak, dark, pear orchard to the lane. The night held no terrors for the girl. All her winters, she'd battled with the cold and winds of the Storm Country. Now, through the lane to the lake, they struggled, heads bent against the blinding blizzard. Under the weeping willow trees stood the empty shanty which had housed her childhood days, and, mechanically, she turned her eyes toward it. She recalled, dully, the strange sequence of events that had transformed her from a squatter's brat and lifted her out of the bleak barrenness of life in the shack.

She'd escaped the squalor, the horrid cold and the hardships, common to the women of the Silent City. She lived more comfortably and decently than the fishermen's wives. She'd learned many things, but all her efforts to improve herself had been centered in her ambitions for Boy. Now it was all wasted! She'd won for him nothing but Waldstricker's enmity. Her aspirations for him and for herself were buried in the little grave on the storm-swept hillside by Daddy Skinner. Like a borrowed mantle, the culture she'd gained under Professor Young's loving tuition slipped from her and the elemental passions of the primitive people that produced her assumed their sway. Subconsciously, the squatter's standards re-established themselves, and she hugged to her heart the hate she'd been cherishing.

On the ice-covered rocks, where they were sheltered from the wind, Jake began to talk.

"I wouldn't have asked ye to come, Tess," he apologized, "if we hadn't needed ye bad."

"I wasn't doing anything at home," the girl answered tonelessly.

"Mr. Young weren't there, were he?" asked Brewer.

"No," replied Tess. "His sister's sick and sent for him."

"I guess she air sick, all right," commented Jake, ominously.

If Tess heard, she didn't heed the sinister suggestion in the squatter's speech. She was busy, her whole attention devoted to plans for revenge upon Waldstricker.

The light from Brewer's hut, which was set back a little from the lake shore, in a frost-riven and water-worn niche in the precipitous cliff, shone mistily through the storm. Cut by slanting lines of driving snow-crystals, its milky radiance obscured rather than defined the drifted path. Breathless, from the blizzard's buffeting, they gained, at last, the hut door.

The fisherman lifted the latch and they stepped into the hut. Seated in chairs around the bare little room were several men, squatter friends of the neighborhood. Near the stove stood Ma Brewer, white-faced and anxious. As soon as she recognized the girl, she began to weep and gesticulate hysterically. Tess went to her and seized her hands.