The Secret of the Storm Country

Tess was thinking of the winter without Frederick. She sickened as she pictured him away off in that foreign land. It seemed he must be at the very end of the world. It bewildered her to think of his being with another woman than herself. She could not think of them as married--He was her husband. She was silent so long that Young spoke to her softly. "Shall I take you home, my dear?"

Numb and dazed, she sat dumbly enduring the hurt.

"Nope, I air goin' to stay here awhile." 'Twas only a trembling breath that wafted the man his answer.

Young hesitated. Then rising he walked away along the rocks, leaving Tess and the brindle dog amid the falling shadows.

Spent with emotion, the squatter girl heard the retreating footsteps of her friend die away in the twilight. Then she pushed the dog gently from her lap and laid herself down upon the rocks and pillowed her aching head upon his body.

Gradually the tender melancholy of the dying day touched her mood with subtle sympathy and soothed her troubled spirit. Rapt in rueful revery, she followed mechanically the flight of a flock of birds. Like swift shadows flitting over the water, they dipped and winged upward and away, out of her vision.

Frederick had gone from her life almost as completely and as suddenly as those birds had disappeared from her sight. How mercilessly short had been her days of happiness, those days threaded and inter-threaded with her husband's love.

The sun had set and the purples and reds were fading from the fleecy clouds in the eastern sky. The gloaming grew in caressing cadences up from the limpid lake to the ragged rocks. The night winds blew gently down the hill side, the swaying leaves were whispering "hush, hush," and the surface of the lake, shimmering in the mellow light of the rising moon, was flecked here and there into silvery sparkles. The airs of evening fluttered the ringlets upon her forehead and enveloped her hot body in cooling comfort. Responsive to the quiet beauty about her, the turmoil of her thoughts subsided. The sharp anguish which had at first stunned her was becoming but a dull ache, permitting her to think connectedly.

This place and this hour held the most vital associations of her young life. Here in the gathering gloom, Frederick had wooed and won her, and had spent with her many of the too few hours of her wedded bliss. Upon such another evening, she had made him the promises that had led to her only deceptions of Daddy Skinner, and here, four short days ago, her husband had murdered her joy.