e warm red altar-cloth bound about Frederick's
head. Alas, Tess had needed a Bible and had stolen it; he had needed
warm covering and had accepted it. There was no difference between the
minister's son and the squatter's daughter. Vicissitude had forced each
into a like position, and somehow Frederick lost his sense of right and
wrong, for he could not sit in judgment upon either action. Never before
in all of his short young life had he really needed anything for
personal comfort--but the altar-cloth. Tess saw the struggle going on in
his mind; she bent toward him, reasoning:

"I needed the Bible, didn't I? Didn't ye say that to save Daddy
Skinner's life I had to have it? Ye needed that red rag what ye got
round yer head. There air only one way in this world--" She was moving
toward him inch by inch, the soles of the fisherman's boots dragging the
bread crumbs and fish bones beneath them. "Ye takes what ye need to save
yer life, or the life of yer Daddy. Folks mostly never steals what they
ain't needin'."

The message went straight home to Frederick. He could not combat such
reasoning. He knew well that he would have frozen but for the timely
stealing of the altar-cloth--also, he knew that the Bible was as
necessary to Tess as the altar-cloth was to him. He mentally lashed
himself into a state of unrest. Why had he not thought of a Bible and
given Tess one? It would have been so easy for him to have supplied her
small needs!

He was watching the girl through the gloomy haze of the bacon smoke, but
spoke no more until Tessibel ordered him to draw up to the table and
eat.

"Have a piece of bacon," said she.

Frederick held up his plate, and Tess shoved a generous portion into it.
She gave him a tempting brown fish, cut a slice of bread, placing it
upon the side of his tin plate, and commenced to eat rapidly from her
own.

Neither boy nor girl mentioned sleeping until the hands of the small
nickel clock on the shelf in the corner pointed out the hour of eleven.
Then Tessibel opened the subject without hesitation or embarrassment.

"It air time fer ye to turn in," said she, banking the embers in the
stove for the night.

"I shall sit up," replied Frederick stiffly.

"There air two beds," commented Tess in simple ignorance of all law save
necessity. "Mine air under Daddy's--see?"

She dragged the rope cot from under the larger bed--a cloud of dust
rising white to the shanty's rafters and settling like a soft mi