raised herself. The shock had hurt her flesh, and made her
sore and lame. She started dazedly toward the door, "Satisfied" trying
to stop her flight, but the strong young body, mad with grief and newly
found despair, slipped through the friendly fingers, and the night,
Tessibel's night, gathered her into its arms, till she was lost in the
long shadows of the pine forest.

CHAPTER V

A night owl hooted in Tessibel's ear as she ran. A bat whirled into her
face--then took himself off. Over the shadowy rocks which cut and
bruised her feet, Tessibel flew.

Daddy was home in the shanty; he was in his bed tired from hauling his
nets. She remembered Ezra had grinned at her as with one hasty look she
had fixed his face in her mind. He had lied to her. Daddy was in the
hut, and if he were up waiting for her--there passed through Tessibel's
small mind the thought of how joyfully she would hop to the bowed
shoulders, and she longed for the kisses she knew would be hers. She
halted before the dark hut and waited. Insects whizzed about her ears as
though they little feared her. The long branches of the weeping willow
dragged themselves across the tin roof with a ghostly sound. This was
Tessibel's night of heart experiences--her first day and her first
night. Oh! to go back to yesterday, with the hidden fear of the student
sleeping soundly in her breast and a Daddy, a dear stooping old Daddy.
She slipped open the shanty door, lighted a candle and looked around.
The frying pan lay bottom up on the floor where she had dropped it. The
tea pail was on the table; a cut loaf of bread lay beside it, covered
with a host of small red ants. All this was familiar to Tess. She kicked
the pan from her path with her bare foot, and sat down on the three
legged stool which her father used at his meals. Portions of fish and
plenty of bones were spread about upon the floor, but the littered
shanty did not distress her newly found notions of cleanliness.

Daddy might go away to the black place where they had taken the Canadian
Indian, who had killed his squaw. Tess remembered hearing how he had
been carried to prison, twelve men had found him guilty of the crime and
at last--Tessibel started up with a groan--the Canadian Indian had been
carried to the place where the rope was.

Daddy Skinner and the Canadian Indian. Tess dared think no longer. She
caught a glimpse of herself in the cracked mirror which Skinner used
when he plied the pinche