you," he implored. "Won't you even tell me
when it--it will be, Tessibel?"

Through her tense fingers the girl murmured a stifled "March."

March--scarce three months away! He would have given five years of his
life to have had her tell him the truth about this thing that had
crushed her. He made a nervous movement with his fingers to his hair.

"You are bound by a promise?" he demanded sharply.

A white, uplifted, pained face was his answer.

"You'll tell me some day, if you can," he said, going swiftly to her.

"Yes," whispered Tess.

And then for a long time nothing was heard in the hut but the winter
without, the growls and mutterings of the bulldog in his sleep by the
stove, and a sob now and then from the dwarf in the garret.

The healing silence of a common love in the presence of a common grief
settled upon the strangely matched couple. The little squatter girl,
with her shameful secret, and the great lawyer and teacher, kept solemn
vigil over the body of Daddy Skinner.

* * * * *

Daddy Skinner was buried. All the arrangement in connection with the
obsequies devolved upon Professor Young. It was he who brought the girl
back to the shanty in her simple, clinging, black gown, and after the
carriage had delivered them at the hut door, carried her, almost
unconscious, into the house and laid her gently upon her bed. Then he
closed the door and sat down beside her. It was perhaps an hour later
when she lifted her eyes appealingly.

"I air awful glad ye stayed with me," she choked.

"Tess,"--Young's voice shook.... "Will you let me talk to you a little
and not feel I'm intruding upon your sorrows or your secrets?"

"Ye wouldn't do anythin' what wasn't right," murmured the girl, under
her breath.

For some moments he smoothed her burning forehead. Then he lifted her
hand and held it in his.

"Tessibel," he began.

"What?"

"First, tell me about the little man in the garret."

"There ain't nothin' much to tell," she responded, shaking her head.
"When he got out of Auburn, he come here and asked me an' Daddy to take
care of 'im, an' we done it, that air all."

"I see, dear--and--and you didn't think the law required you to give him
up?"

Tess moved her head negatively on the pillow.

"Sure not, or I'd a done it long ago. The law--what do I care 'bout the
law?... It air always puttin' innercent men in jail. That air all the
law air fer."

"But this man is a mur