e
asked presently.

Tess nodded, still looking fearfully into his face.

"He was disobeying the law," replied Frederick gravely.

Again she nodded, for Tess had no spirit to thwart an argument at that
moment.

"People who disobey the law," went on the student in his youthful
righteousness, "take their life in their hands, and other people's too.
Don't you think that the woman left without her husband, the
gamekeeper's wife, is weeping for him?"

It was a new thought for Tess, but she would not harbor it. It didn't
seem quite just to Daddy. She drew down the red lips at the corners, and
helplessly clung closer and closer to the toad.

"What are you going to do?" asked the student. "You lived here with your
father, but you can't stay here alone."

"It air my home," she said distrustfully, "and I stays here and hangs to
this here shanty till Daddy comes back. Aw, he air comin' back, ain't
he? He won't go to that place--?"

She closed her lips, fearing to utter the thought.

Frederick shook his head.

"Poor child," he said, with a fatherly air. "It is a dangerous
position."

If the case had been placed before Frederick Graves to decide, yesterday
he would have hanged Orn Skinner for the murder of the gamekeeper. But
to-night--well, to-night his ideas of men and ... of women, too, had
changed.

"But he didn't mean it," went on Tess, casting back the unruly hair
which shrouded her face in its new state of cleanliness. "He wouldn't
have hurt a fly, Daddy Skinner wouldn't."

A whistle from the outside, heard plainly through the beating of the
wind, caused Frederick to fling open the door.

"Yes, father," he said loudly, "I'm here. I missed you on the way. Come
in a moment if you will."

Tessibel gathered herself more closely into a small human ball than
ever. She had feared the minister since the time she had talked off his
warts with the wizard words she had learned from a hag living on the
ragged rocks.

"What's this," demanded the Dominie, looking sternly at her, and she
dropped her eyes in confusion.

"It's Orn Skinner's girl," replied his son. "Skinner is the man who shot
Stebbins to-night. You heard Deacon Hall talking about it at the
cottage."

This explanation was superfluous, for the minister well knew the girl
and her father.

"It's a nice mess your father's got himself into," he said harshly.

Tessibel lifted her head.

"He didn't mean to do it, sir," she replied, not daring to rise, bec