through the holes that Daddy had cut in the soles on the rocks, but the
tops were whole--and Tess looked upon them with pride.

When the daylight flooded the cabin Tess blew out the candle and viewed
her work with delight. How pleased Daddy would be--after this she would
be a model housekeeper. He should sleep in the morning until she had
prepared his breakfast, and her fingers would fly in the summer,
gathering the berries and fruit to make more money so that he should
not run risks with the netting!

That first day of waiting seemed interminably long, but Tess spent it
happily, for ever vividly into her mind came the words of Frederick the
student--that God would hear, and answer.

Day by day her faith in the efficacy of her petitions had grown upon
her. In spite of the fact that she had been caught by Daddy's enemies in
her nightly scrambles up the ivy at the jail, God had answered in
letting her see her father so many times at the end of her midnight
walks.

* * * * *

Three men of squatter's row staggered through the storm up the Lehigh
Valley tracks. They passed the line of huts, making an occasional
comment upon the inhabitants of some lighted shanty.

It was the evening of the second of November, the first day of Orn
Skinner's trial. The squatters had turned out in great numbers to see
how the humped prisoner looked before his condemnation, for all believed
that the fisherman would hang. It would be establishing a new precedent
if Skinner were acquitted--and Ithaca never established new precedents
with squatters.

So mused the men as they sullenly toiled toward home, each satisfied in
his heart that, if Skinner went the way of others from the row, it would
be but another act of revenge upon the part of the townspeople, for had
not one and every witness save Elias Graves testified that day to the
good character of the accused man?

The headlight of a locomotive sent them to the side track.

"Orn's face were yaller'n saffron, wern't it, when Minister Graves said
as how he were a cussed pap of a cusseder gal," said Ezy Longman to Jake
Brewer and Ben Letts.

"He were that mad," agreed Letts, "that the humps on his back just riz
up and down--he were that mad he were."

"But it were screechin' funny when the jedge made the parson speak out
what Tess done," laughed Jake Brewer.

"You bet," assented Ezry Longman. "But why weren't she there to-day?"

"Don't know," answered