he faith, Tess!" moaned Teola, rocking to and fro in her
keen agony of soul. "Long ago I stopped believing the way I did when I
was a child. I prayed that night when Dan was killed, until my head
ached and pounded for days. I wanted to see him once more, and God
wouldn't let me; and then I prayed again--" Teola buried her face in the
breast of the infant, and sobbed, "I prayed that the baby might die
when he was born, but God didn't see fit to take him. Somehow, it
doesn't do any good to pray any more."

Tess paused in her work, standing with her hands on her hips, a solemn
expression in the long eyes.

"Yer faith wasn't as big as a speck of dirt, then, were it?" she
queried. "And maybe mine ain't for Daddy. But the student air a-prayin'
for him! It air a damn shame ye ain't got him a-prayin' for yerself and
the kid.... Ye'd a seen yer man before now, and the brat would 'a' died,
too."

With a start caused by the squatter's words, Teola laid the child down,
crouching back upon her feet. She eyed the fisher-girl critically. What
a strange mixture of good and bad--of the holy and the unholy--lived in
the tawny, magnificent squatter! She answered hesitatingly:

"But if my brother should know about the baby, it would break my heart,
Tessibel. It would kill me--and him, too! Nothing could ever make me
tell him. You understand, don't you, Tess?"

"Yep."

It was as Tess had said. The storm was coming nearer, sending vivid
shafts of lightning in splendid awfulness across the sky. Torrents of
rain descended, thrashing the lake into uneven, towering crests of white
foam. The weeping willow tree groaned over the shanty roof, jarring and
tearing at the broken bits of tarred tin.

"Tess, Tess, how can you bear that awful noise, constantly through the
night? It frightens me to death. It sounds like the spirits of people
who are dead."

She shivered again, the cutting rasp from the chimney place stinging her
with fright.

"It air spirits," replied Tess softly. "There air one kind of spirits
for the sun when it air a-shinin', and the waves just a-ripplin' over
the lake. They air good spirits. But on nights like this there air bad
ones--the ghosts of Indians, squaws, and sometimes of the Letts'
family--them dead 'uns."

She paused, her low voice trailing into silence on that one word "dead,"
the luminous eyes burning with superstitious fear. How many times had
the squaw and her burnt brat, now long since called to the land