?" inquired the dwarf, softly.

"Nope, it air only Tess can do it," replied the squatter.

Tessibel heard but remained in the same position.

"Tess air the only one can help," repeated Brewer.

The girl sank back in her chair, allowing her hands to drop in her lap.

"What is it?" she asked listlessly.

"Ma Brewer air sick," said the squatter. "She air knowin' ye air in
trouble, but--but--"

It seemed to the girl as if this Christmas-tide had brought sorrow to
everyone.

She rose to her feet, stiff from sitting in the same position for so
long a time.

"I'll get her something, Jake," she said quickly.

"Ma an' me know ye got a lot of sorrow, brat," choked the man, "but Ma
were a wonderin' if ye'd run to the shack fer a minute." Noticing the
girl's hesitation, "She's awful sick an' mebbe if ye'd come, she'd feel
better.'"

"I'll get your wraps, brat," Andy offered.

Both men helped Tessibel into her things. She stood very quiet until
Andy held out her mittens.

"I'll only be gone a few minutes," she promised the dwarf. "Come on,
Jake!"

And together they went out into the storm.

CHAPTER L

TESSIBEL'S VISION

Tessibel and Jake Brewer made their way through the bleak, dark, pear
orchard to the lane. The night held no terrors for the girl. All her
winters, she'd battled with the cold and winds of the Storm Country.
Now, through the lane to the lake, they struggled, heads bent against
the blinding blizzard. Under the weeping willow trees stood the empty
shanty which had housed her childhood days, and, mechanically, she
turned her eyes toward it. She recalled, dully, the strange sequence of
events that had transformed her from a squatter's brat and lifted her
out of the bleak barrenness of life in the shack. She'd escaped the
squalor, the horrid cold and the hardships, common to the women of the
Silent City. She lived more comfortably and decently than the
fishermen's wives. She'd learned many things, but all her efforts to
improve herself had been centered in her ambitions for Boy. Now it was
all wasted! She'd won for him nothing but Waldstricker's enmity. Her
aspirations for him and for herself were buried in the little grave on
the storm-swept hillside by Daddy Skinner. Like a borrowed mantle, the
culture she'd gained under Professor Young's loving tuition slipped from
her and the elemental passions of the primitive people that produced her
assumed their sway. Subconsciously, the squatter's s