young lips met his. Never had Tess seen him look just that way, not even
when he had been taken from her to prison. The expression on his face
was hopeless, forlornly hopeless, and to wait until he began to speak
took all the patience the eager girl-soul could muster.

"Brat, dear," he sighed at length, "I ain't needin' to tell ye again
what I went through in Auburn, hev I?"

Brown eyes, frightened and fascinated, sought and found the faded greys.

"'Course not, Daddy Skinner! But what fer air ye talkin' about Auburn
Prison?... Ye promised me, Daddy, ye'd forgit all about them days, an'
now what're ye rememberin' 'em fer?"

Skinner's face blanched, and drops of sweat formed in the spaces behind
his ears and trickled in little streams down his neck.

"I got to remember 'em, child," he groaned.

"What fer I want to know? Ye'd best make a hustle an' tell me or, in a
minute, I'll be gettin' awful mad."

The pleading, sorrowful face belied the threat, and a pair of red lips
touched Skinner's hand between almost every word.

"Do ye bring to mind my tellin' ye about any of the fellers up there,
Tessibel?" came at length from the man's shaking lips.

Tess stroked his arm lovingly.

"Sure, Daddy, I remember 'bout lots of 'em, an' how good they be, an'
how kind, an' how none of 'em be guilty."

"Ye bet none of 'em be guilty," muttered Daddy Skinner. "Nobody air ever
guilty who gets in jail.... Folks be mostly guilty that air out o'
prison to my mind."

"That air true, Daddy Skinner," she assented, smiling. "Sure it air
true, but it ain't no good reason fer you to be yappin' 'bout Auburn,
air it?... Now git that look out of yer eyes, an' tell Tessibel what air
troublin' ye!"

But Daddy Skinner's grave old face still kept its set expression. The
haunted look, born in his eyes in the Ithaca Jail, had returned after
all these happy months. Tess was frantic with apprehension and dread.

"Ye know well's ye're born, Daddy, nobody can hurt ye," she told him
strenuously. "Ye've got Tessibel, and ye've got--" She was about to say,
"Frederick," but substituted, "Professor Young."

The girl lovingly slipped her fingers over her father's heavy hand and
drew it from her curls.

"Ye're goin' to peel it off to me now, ain't ye?" she coaxed.

"Let's go inside the shanty," said the fisherman, in a thick voice.

With the door closed and barred, the father and daughter sat for some
time in troubled silence.

"I asked if ye r