"Ye air sicker this morning, honey, huh?" asked Tess anxiously, lifting the pail to the table.
"Yep, brat, awful sick, but mebbe I'll feel better after a while."
"Yer coffee'll be ready quicker'n scat, dear," said the girl. "Flop on my bed an' stretch out a minute. Tessibel'll get her daddy's breakfast."
Five minutes later she had fried the fish and made the coffee.
"I air goin' to give Daddy his eatin's first, Andy," she called up through the hole in the ceiling.
"All right; sure, do, kid," assented the dwarf.
* * * * * Daddy Skinner gradually felt better, and during the morning Tessibel's youthful spirits rose by leaps and bounds. All through the day she warbled out her happiness, lovingly bantering the two crippled men. Thus the minutes crept on to eventide, to that hour on the ragged rocks with Frederick.
She left the shanty early, that she might commune undisturbed for a time with her dear wild world. Through the gloaming the dull sound of the cow bells came distinctly from Kennedy's farm. The roosters were crowing a last good-night to the sun. The monstrous shadows of the great forest trees were going to sleep in the earth for another night. While the daylight was fading, the girl sat relaxed against the rocks, her unfathomable eyes contemplating the purple-spanned lake. She had drifted into a reverie ... blissfully dreaming, with Frederick the foremost figure of her dreams. The solemn descent of night ever signified the mystery of his love to her. Now, from the fullness of her unalloyed joy, she glanced up at the sky and blessed the whole world. In imagination she deciphered the words the stars were forming. Stretched from pole to pole, they lettered the heavens with the wonders of infinitude. In a diadem of gold, "God is love" was written; from the unsearchable north to the south where in their turn the slender rimming clouds sent it on to the world beyond. "God is love," whispered the swaying trees, and "God is love" came softly to the ear of the sensitive girl, as an echo is flung back from the rocks and is sent home to its maker.
And even as Tess dreamed, the passion stars in their invisible courses bent toward her. Impulsively she lifted her arms upward toward those twinkling participants of her secret, emblems of the immeasurable glory of her love for Frederick. By a simple turn, she could see the tree of her old-time fancies, the familiar figure in the tall pine, with swaying, majestic head and beckoning arms.
At that moment, she perceived Frederick making his way along the ragged rocks. She could hear her heart's blood pulsing madly, striking at her wrists, throbbing at her temples, making a race the length of her quivering body. Now, she could see him plainly in the dim light, and a smile deepened the dimple at each corner of her mouth. An indefinable shyness kept her from running to him to tell her glad tidings. But what made him walk so slowly and with hanging head? It wasn't like Frederick. Something unusual had happened or he would not lag so in coming to her.