nful jerks, but there was
nothing to show the girl that he felt her presence. The silent awful
pulsating of the toad manifested its dumb suffering. A candle flickered
as she sought to solve the problem. The night wind flapped the dirty
curtain and Tessibel turned her head slowly toward it. A bird's cry from
somewhere in the weeping willow, came in through the window. With silent
intensity, she dragged her body slowly across the floor toward the
flattened reptile--above him she squatted--the gorgeous hair sweeping
the filth strewn floor. Tess could mark the places where the beloved
warts had been--she knew how many there were even to the tiny ones. With
the halting precision of the ignorant, she had counted them singly every
day. But the severest heart wrench of all was to come to Tess. The great
squat hind legs, which had been her pride, when Frederick jumped through
her rounded arms--curled to make a hoop--were gone, and the movements of
Frederick's body left a tiny trail of dark blood upon the shanty floor.
She couldn't touch that dying thing. In her vehement desire to relieve
him of his pain, she burst into song which went upward and outward,
ringing over the lake, returning again, only to be sent further and
further into the heavens.

"Rescue the perishin'
Care for the dyin'."

This was all Tessibel knew of the hymn--over and over she sang it,
fearfully watching the toad move grotesquely in the candlelight. Time
after time the blinking eyes closed and flew open--again and again
Tessibel sent her importunate prayer into the heart of the Great
Unknown.

Frederick gave a great deep sob, his fat sides lifted and fell twice,
and as the petitionate lips of the girl sent the song once more into the
night, he flopped over on his back, straightened out the little wounded
stumps, and died.

Daddy Skinner, the Canadian Indian, and Frederick! Tess couldn't
separate the three--the prayerful mood died with the toad. She opened
her lips and uttered two great piercing shrieks, which sounded and
resounded through the rafters of the shanty, out into the darkness and
up to the ragged rocks. It was the cry of a wounded human thing,
amounting to but little in the great whirling universe. The dying of the
scream brought words from her lips.

"Daddy Skinner, Daddy Skinner."

Then twice in equally shrill longing, resounded the name of her dead
friend.

"Frederick, aw, aw Frederick!"

Both cries followed the pra