voice.

Teola struggled to her feet, suppressing her grief. The question stopped
the flow of tears, and the two girls, so differently situated, the one
the daughter of an eminent minister, and the other a squatter,
wonderingly eyed each other.

"I thought I was alone," was Teola's answer.

"So ye was," replied Tess. "I heard ye cryin' from the lower ledge of
the rocks. What air the matter?"

Infinite pity and tenderness in the coarse words, spoken in a sweet,
persuasive voice, brought a fresh burst of tears from Teola.

"I'm--I'm ill to-day."

"Ye'll be all right to-morry.... 'T'ain't much, air it?"

"It is very much to me," whispered Teola. "I'm so lonely, and so
afraid!"

Tessibel sat silently down beside the other girl, twining one arm about
the twisted root of the tree. She was used to sorrow, used to watching
the agony of human souls without hope. A bird in the top of the tree
above them sent a plaintive note into the hot air. Another answered
from the forest, and Tessibel raised her head and saw a scarlet bird
take wing and disappear into the branches of the wood trees.

She waited for Teola to speak, but at last, seeing there was no
cessation of tears, she leaned over and touched her.

"Be ye lonely for yer ma?" she murmured.

Teola shook her head in the negative.

"Then for yer pa?"

"No!"

Ah! Tess had forgotten. Had she not seen Frederick go away weeks before,
in a boat filled with pots and kettles and food for a camping
expedition? Had he not smiled at her brightly as she passed him on her
way to the fish line? She could remember the tense feeling in her
throat, and felt again the hot blood rushing madly into her face. Of
course, the girl was weeping for her brother!

"Then air ye blattin' for the student?"

She could scarcely utter the last word, scarcely let Teola hear her
voice use that beloved name.

"Yes, I was crying for him," replied Teola. "He is dead, you know."

For one instant Tess thought the world had lost its sun. Her face
creased into lines, which tightened rope-like under the tanned skin. How
could Frederick have died, and she not have known? She rose unsteadily
to her feet, uttering one grunt significant of her suffering.

"Were he drowned?" she asked, in a voice so pained that Teola raised her
head and looked at her. She did not understand the meaning of the
whitened lips nor of the tense drawing-down of the long red-brown eyes.

"No," she replied slowly, "he was k