inking. Once only had she seen the lids
fall slowly downward, to rise again over the unseeing eyes.

"He knows he air a-goin' to church," she muttered lovingly. "I wonder if
that air why he air so good.... Mebbe the spirit of his pappy air here."

She heard the names fall from the lips of the clergyman, as he took the
infants, one by one, and placed his hand upon them with the water.

"I baptize thee, John Richard," Graves said slowly, "in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

"Of the Holy Ghost...." He was the Spirit of God Who stood by the
children, to take away the sin with which they had been born. Teola had
told Tess so. The Holy Ghost would take away the sin of little Dan.

"I baptize thee," broke the silence, time after time, amid the tiny
splashes of falling water. The last must have gone up to the altar, for
Tess heard the minister telling the fathers and mothers the duty they
owed their children.

"I finish my service to-day," said he, "by praying God to bless you all,
and calling down the good-will of Heaven upon your children just
baptized in His name."

Tessibel did not wait to hear the rest. She raised the child from the
basket, shielding him from the sun with her body, stretched him out
reverently upon her hands, and tiptoed up the long flight of steps into
the church. A sea of heads rose before her startled vision. Transfixed,
she paused in the door, waiting for Graves to cease speaking. Her eye
caught the pew of the minister. Teola sat next to Frederick on the end,
Mrs. Graves between her and her younger daughter. Tess noticed the
tense expression upon the sharp profile of the babe's mother. How glad
Teola would be when the baby was baptized! How happy in the new-found
Heaven for her child!

The minister's voice had fallen into a prayer. And still Tess waited
with the dying infant, staring wide-eyed upward at the great church
dome. Every head was bowed: no one saw the strange girl, with hair flung
wide about her shoulders, nor the tiny human being resting upon her
hands.

Silence fell upon the congregation, and Tessibel commenced her walk down
through the sea of faces to the pulpit. She gave no glance toward Teola
as she passed, but kept her eyes fixed upon Dominie Graves, who, without
noticing her, had turned to the little flight of steps that led to his
pulpit. When he reached the Bible stand, and opened his lips to speak,
his gaze dropped upon the squatter. At fir