at the sleeping youth.

"What do ye want?" she demanded vaguely.

"First ye air to come with me to the Brindle Bull at Kennedy's--I air
got somethin' for him.... He air dead in the mornin' by the hand of the
girl what loves him."

There was unlimitable sarcasm in the vile, low face as Ben hissed this
out.

"And after that?" asked Tess, edging toward the lower part of "Daddy's"
bed. There she could reach for the covering over Frederick, and he would
save her. The feeling of the night before that she was his protector
vanished. He would--

"Never mind after that," growled Ben. "Ye had yer chance at bein' hones'
and ye wouldn't take it."

Tessibel slipped her feet into Daddy's boots--she was strangely buoyant
and unafraid. It was the woman in her rising to that supreme moment when
she should call upon the man she loved, and he would answer. Ben was
leaning against the wall, his eyes having sought for no other person in
the room.

With the agility of a hare, Tessibel dashed around him toward Frederick,
and snatched the blankets from the bed. The workings of Ben's mind were
so slow that the form of the student loomed up, before he realized that
the minister's son was in Tessibel's cabin.

"Ye air here to save me, Frederick," cried Tess, the light of the
lantern sending a ray into the upturned widening eyes.

Letts dropped his under jaw, his body relaxing in fear. He was an arrant
coward like the most of his downtrodden race. Then something shifted
through his thick brain, and he smiled knowingly.

"So the high and the low air together--eh? The Dominie's son, and the
fisherman's brat--the student--and the--"

Before he had finished the sneering words, Frederick had struck him full
in the face. Boyish dignity--his father's position--God--everything was
forgotten save Tess. He only knew that she was being maligned, and that
her holy mission of rescuing him from the frost of a night like this was
being turned into evil by a squint-eyed fisherman whom he had never seen
before.

Into the man's fat flabby body crashed Frederick's strong fists.
Tessibel stood looking on, her head bent forward alertly. One arm was
clasped about her neck--excitement sparkling from the flushed face and
panting lips. Once the throat sound that came when she was excited
rolled forth; otherwise she was silent.

Thrashed from side to side, his ragged coat made worse by the severe
shaking Frederick was administering, Ben Letts groaned audib