the blind fish cars until they could be
cleaned. She looked into "Satisfied" Longman's face.

"Air he a carin' for the fish?"

Longman shook his head in the negative.

"Where air he then?"

Tessibel's voice was sharp and penetrating. It awoke Mrs. Longman
upstairs and the infant in the box beside the rope cot.

"He air gone to prison," put in Ezra opening and shutting his eyes, and
licking his thick lips with his red tongue. "He air where ye won't see
him to scratch his face when ye goes into a tantrum. He air in prison."

The bronze eyes widened and lengthened till the very fear in them
startled her companions. The tall, slight figure with its weight of
rags, swayed to the hut floor--the clean shining face gathered into a
painful pucker, while the two fists which had fought many a hard battle,
clenched until the nails entered the calloused skin under each finger.
Not one word came from the tightened white lips. The dumb agony was
worse than a child's frantic scream of fear. Somehow, Ben's mind went
back to the toad, when it also had borne its misery dumbly.

"Satisfied" Longman, stooping down, grasped the girl and stood her on
her feet. No one had ever seen Tess like this. Ben leered, the sides of
his fat cheeks protruding in the joyful emotion he felt at Tessibel's
suffering.

"He killed the gamekeeper," he grinned, leaning back against the wall.
"He air where ye won't hurt him now."

The tortured Tess could bear no more. She had striven to be brave when
she thought of "Daddy" in the small cell which she had heard many times
vividly described. She had thought vaguely of months, perhaps a whole
year without him, but Ben's words made her father a murderer, and
murderers went away sometimes never to return. Her Daddy!--and Ezra had
said that she could never scratch his face again. She hurt Daddy? Did
every one in the settlement think that? She sank down beside Myra's
father and winding her arms about his legs implored him to say that it
was only Ben's and Ezra's fun.

"It air fun, only fun, Satisfied, ain't it," she pleaded, "for Daddy,
poor old Daddy, never killed no man."

"We all says as how it were a mistake," replied Longman. "Ben says the
gun went off in yer Daddy's hands and the warden dropped, and the other
gamekeeper took yer Daddy away at the point of his pistol. I were at the
north reel and couldn't save him nohow."

Tessibel understood. It was all plain now. She loosened her arms and
painfully