The Secret of the Storm Country

For four lingering days, hour after hour, Tess of the Storm Country waited for Frederick. He had promised to return, and so each day when her household duties were completed, she hastened to the ragged rocks at the edge of the forest. But her eager hope passed into sick apprehension as the lingering twilights of successive evenings deepened into the darkness of night and he did not come. Tess grew paler and more dejected, so that even Daddy Skinner's fading sight remarked it.

"Ain't feelin' quite pert, be ye, brat?" he inquired.

Tessibel started nervously.... It was habitual now if any one spoke to her quickly.

"I ain't sick, daddy," she assured him. "I guess it air the hot day makin' me tired."

"Nuff to bake the hair off a cast iron pup," observed Andy, from the garret hole.

"I'll bet it air some warm up there, pal," sympathized Orn.

"Ye bet yer neck," agreed Andy cheerfully.

Then Tessibel hopefully started for the rocks in search of the sunshine which had left her life with Frederick four days before.

* * * * * Deforrest Young, too, had noticed the change in his little friend ... had observed her extreme nervousness and unusual shyness when she recited her lessons. Today, moreover, she had not appeared at all. Late that afternoon he called at the Skinner home to find the reason.

Daddy Skinner occupied his customary seat on the bench in front of the shack, watching with listless, dull eyes the restless waves. He greeted the professor with his twisted smile, as the latter called to him from the lane.

"Where's Tessibel?" asked Young, after they had remarked upon the weather and the health of themselves and their friends.

"Well, I don't know just where she air gone," replied Orn, "but seems to me's if she went off toward the rocks. Shall I call her, eh?"

"No, no! I'll go look for her," answered the professor.

He found her sitting pensively on the rocks, her hand resting on the head of Kennedy's brindle bulldog, and in the moment he stood there gazing at the girl, he felt unaccountably saddened.

When Tess became conscious of his presence, she gave him a shadowy, fleeting smile, which vanished almost before it had fully appeared. Her eyes were heavy and dim with unshed tears, and she was as pale as the mist clouds that drifted slowly across the sky and away over the eastern hills. Perhaps it was the melancholy of that smile appealing to his deep love that made Professor Young hurry toward her, holding out his hands.

Pete greeted him with a welcoming whine, wagging his whole body, in default of the tail he had lost.