yer, echoing their agony out through the
window--the flapping curtain with its tatters offering no impediment for
its outgoing.

Suddenly Tessibel staggered to her feet, for back to her through the
window, from somewhere near the mud cellar, came an answering voice,
deep-toned and vibrant--

"What? What?"

Frederick, the student, stood in the door of the dirty shanty, looking
upon an unkempt, copper-eyed girl, and a great squat, dead, wartless
toad.

CHAPTER VI

"You called me?"

A silence.

"You called me?"

The student repeated the words twice, so satisfied was he that his name
had been called out in tones of great insistence.

Tessibel was deaf to his words. His presence had filled her completely.
Leaning against the post of Daddy's bed, she glued her eyes upon the
student's face, the fringed lids sprung to their fullest capacity. The
extreme fascination in her gaze held the boy spellbound--then the
eyelids quivered and it was over.

Frederick glanced hurriedly about the room, the untidiness of it all
striking his sensitiveness. He noted the pungent smell of fried fish
mixed with inferior grease, the ant-covered bread, the confusion of
ragged bed-clothes, and lastly of all, the other Frederick. Tessibel
gasped as the newcomer looked longest upon her dead. She thought she saw
him shiver as he stepped back a little.

This brought her grief vividly back to her. The pain, as acute and sharp
as the knife which had ended the life of Frederick, entered her already
riven soul. The instant before a mingled sensation of shame and
embarrassment had swept over her because of the appearance of the hut,
and her own bare legs and feet; but the helpless dead sent even that
from her.

"He air gone," she said chokingly, coming forward with a totter.

Disgust rested paramount upon the student's face. Surprise followed this
as Tessibel threw herself in limp unconcern beside the other Frederick
and gathered the stiffened toad into her arms. She rocked to and fro as
a mother might who had suddenly discovered that the great White Mystery
had robbed her of her child. Tessibel's maternal instinct was being
strongly developed in her agony of the hour, and the identity of
Frederick the student, was lost in Frederick, the toad, her one little
friend, to whom she had told all her sorrows, and had been ruthlessly
torn from her. Already she could feel the short front legs growing
stiff, and the throat which had so often