n. The girl flung open the door, but hesitated on
the threshold. During the instant of her indecision, a silent panorama
of night passed before her. Heavy rain clouds dipped almost to the dark
water, obscuring the city and the University hill beyond. A great
steamer attached to a number of canal boats lay as a thin black line in
the center of the lake. An owl left the branches of the hut tree and
circled into the safety of the shore willows, and a stealthy barn cat,
with thread-like legs, crept from the water's edge toward the lane with
a trailing dead fish in his jaws. He turned glistening green eyes upon
Tess, and leapt away with his treasure.

Oh! to be out once more in the darkness with the child--out among God's
creatures, her creatures, there she would be safe--safe from Myra's
terror.

Glancing back at little Dan, she saw his large gray eyes fixed gravely
upon the candlelight. To leave him there was like sending him into the
jaws of death. To take him was impossible. She turned back, closed the
door with a gasp, and faced Ben Letts.

He was at her side in a moment.

"I air got ye now," sounded in her ear like the roar of the sea. She
felt the man crush her in his arms, felt the thick lips upon her face.

"Ye think ye be such a smart kid that ye needn't never mind what a man
says to ye. I knows that brat don't belong to yerself. I ain't seed ye
all summer for nothin'. Tell me, whose air he?"

Tess wrenched herself free, and sent forth scream after scream. A horny
hand left a red mark across the fair face. It was the right of the
fisherman to beat the woman he loved.... Tessibel Skinner was feeling
for the first time the aggressiveness of the male.

"Ben, Ben, I tells ye the truth if ye wait a minute."

Ben relaxed his hold a little, and the girl continued:

"The brat ain't mine--it air a woman's on the hill. She didn't like it,
and gave it to me, with a little money, till Daddy comes back."

"Whose brat air it?"

"A woman's I says, a-livin' on the hill."

The words struggled through the fishy hand.

"Ye'll take it back to her to-night, ye does; then ye comes with me to
the shanty. Yer Daddy ain't a-comin' here no more."

Suddenly Tess heard footsteps crushing the pebbles near the hut. She
could be saved, if she-- She wrenched her face upward, and screamed,

"Rescue ther perishin'!"

The words were sent out in such a strain of agony that Ben Letts thrust
his fingers to her throat. With an oath he