saying that he had been seen upon a line of
canal boats going to Albany. The mother watched each hour for some word
from him. Then, with a sorrowful expression in the faded eyes, she said
to Myra:

"If Ezy had had any edication, he'd 'a' writ. He'll be a-comin' home
some of these days."

After that, the fisherman's hut carried along its usual routine--while a
boy in the city was wrestling with fever, and the head of the law school
hung upon his muttered words with avidity.

* * * * *

"You think he is very ill, Tess?" Teola asked, early one evening in
September, when she and Tessibel were alone in the Skinner hut. Tess
came forward to the wooden box, holding in her hand the frying-pan
filled with bacon fat, and gazed down upon the baby Dan, contemplating
the wee old-man face thoughtfully.

"He air sick! He air a look on him what air on Myry's brat--kind of
sickly. That air because he has so many lines in his face, and he air so
little," she finished, wrinkling the sun-tanned cheeks and shrugging her
shoulders almost disdainfully.

Teola knelt down, and slipped one slender arm under the dark head. These
two girls had been drawn together during the past few weeks by a tie
stronger than death. It had brought Frederick nearer to the squatter,
and little did Teola realize that, had it not been for her handsome
brother, her secret would have been discovered long before. It was of
him she was thinking as she bent over the fire-scarred babe on this
stormy September night in the fisherman's hut.

"I may not be able to come down to-morrow, Tessibel," she said, looking
up into the serious face, "because my brother is coming home early in
the morning."

The frying-pan fell to the floor; the fat spattered and ran across the
broken, tilted boards until it congealed into rounded miniature
mountains. Teola turned a puzzled face toward the fishermaid, but there
was nothing about the girl to tell her why the accident had happened,
for Tessibel, grappling with a huge cloth, was wiping the floor
furiously.

"I was saying, Tess," repeated Teola, "that I may not come down
to-morrow.... Oh! hear how it rains, and the thunder!... Tess, since he
died, and the baby came, thunder-storms make me shiver."

"It ain't nothin' that'll hurt ye," grunted Tess from her position on
the floor.

"I know it, unless one stands directly in the lightning's path. But I am
such a coward, Tessibel! You have so much fa