were large
and grey. Locks of damp hair fell over a wrinkled, broad brow, giving
the infant the expression of an old, old man. In the light Tess could
mark every feature. She had never seen a babe so small, and so
sickly-looking. She ran her fingers over the right cheek, tenderly,
rubbing down a livid mark that extended from the dark hair to the upper
part of the breast. It was the birth-mark of fire, red and gleaming
crimson as the brightest blood, and it had been because of this mark
that Tess had refused the young mother's request to see her child.
Perhaps in the morning it would be gone. If not, Teola would be stronger
and better able to bear the shock. After wrapping the infant closely in
a warm cloth, Tess took it in her arms, and laid herself down beside
Teola; and the trio slept as all youth sleeps, until the morning sun had
been shining long in the window.

* * * * *

"Be ye better now?" asked Tess, trying to stand Teola on her feet.

"I am dreadfully ill yet," was the whispered answer. "But I want to see
my baby.... And what shall I do with him? Oh, what shall I do?"

"He air a-sleepin' now," replied the squatter. "And he stays here with
me, ye hear? Ye can't take him to yer pa's house, and the hut air good
enough for him to live in, if it was good enough for him to be borned
in."

"You mean, Tessibel, that you will care for my baby, until I can
arrange something for him?--So that my father and mother may not know--"

"Er the student," broke in Tess.

"My brother! Tess, my brother Frederick! He must not know. It would kill
him--and me. You, Tess,--you swear that you won't tell him?"

"I ain't a-tellin' him nothin'. I swears it, ye hear? I swears I won't
tell the student nothin' about the little kid."

"Of course you won't," answered Teola weakly. "I trust you, Tessibel."

There was a deep questioning in the squatter girl's eyes as they rested
upon the quiet bundle on the foot of the bed. How could a mother leave
her child in the care of a stranger?--leave him in a squatter's hut,
where the rats scurried hungrily about the floor, and the bats fluttered
among the ceiling rafters!

"Don't look like that, Tessibel!" Teola burst in. "You understand, don't
you, that I can't tell them?--that I can't take him home? My brother
loves me better than any other person in the world, and I love him as
much as he does me."

The blood suffused the drawn face to the hair line.

"A