of bacon."

"But why didn't ye send the brat to the workhouse?" asked Jake.

"Satisfied" Longman, as he was called, shook his head.

"I was satisfied to let it stay," was all he answered.

"My old mammy says," offered Ben Letts, "as how yer son Ezy asked
Tessibel Skinner to marry him and as how she slicked him in the face
with a dirty dishrag."

He slowly closed the scarlet lids over his crossed eyes, suspending the
pickerel in his hand the while.

"Tess ain't had no mother," remonstrated Longman, after a long silence,
pausing a moment in his bloody work and allowing his eyes to rest upon
the magnificent buildings of the University, rearing above the town,
"and Myry says that them what has ought to be satisfied."

Just then a shadow fell upon the shore of the lake near the fishermen.

"There air Tess now," muttered Letts and his two companions eyed a
figure clad in rags, with flying copper-colored hair and bare dirty
feet, which dropped down beside Longman without asking whether or no.

"Cleanin' fish?" she queried.

"Can't ye see?" growled Ben.

"'Course I can," she answered; "just wondered if ye knowed yerselves."

"Where be yer dad?" queried Longman, smiling as he caught up two long
fish, depositing one beside him where it flopped helplessly about upon
the hot sand.

"Gone to Ithacy," replied Tessibel, and without change of expression or
color caught the floundering fish in her dirty fingers.

"I air a hittin' the little devil on the head with a stone," said she,
and with a pointed rock she expertly tapped the fish three times behind
the beady eyes and threw him down again motionless.

"Suppose seein' the fish wrigglin' gives Tessibel mollygrubs in her
belly," grinned Jake Brewer, but Ben Letts broke in.

"How be yer toad to-day, Tessibel?"

This he said with a malevolent smile, as he took from his pocket a huge
hunk of tobacco and munched a generous mouthful therefrom.

"Pretty well," answered Tess pertly, and measuring the blue water with
her eye, she sent a flat stone skipping across it. Then with darkening
face she wheeled about upon the heavy squatter.

"But air it any of yer business how my toad air, Ben Letts?"

"Naw," laughed Ben, nudging Jake in the ribs with his bare elbow, "only
I thought as how he might be dead." Then he whispered to Brewer, "Wait
till I get at him."

"Dead--dead, who said as how he air dead? Ye in't been a rubberin' in
his hole, have ye, Ben Letts?"

Ben only l