ause
of her bare, long legs.

"Didn't, eh?" roared Graves in his wrath, placing his hand on his son's
shoulder. "He was right glad to have the chance to use his gun, or why
did he take it with him?"

Tessibel raised her eyes to the rafters, and her face flooded with
color. The rifle was gone--Daddy Skinner had taken it with him. She was
too young to argue with such a man and only wiped her face with her
sleeve and sobbed.

"God will see that justice is done, my girl. Your father will hang, do
you hear?" shouted Graves. "Hang by the neck till he's dead, and this
shanty will be burned with all its filth!"

Frederick clutched his father's arm, his face changing from red to white
as he watched Tessibel. She had clambered to her feet, ridiculously
tangled in the rags of her dress. The dead Frederick was forgotten,
falling with a great thud upon the floor. Her face was so mobile, so
glassily white that if the hand of death had smitten her, she could not
have looked ghastlier.

Standing before them, the tears drying over the hot blood which rushed
in torrents afresh from her heart to her face, Tessibel learned her
first lesson in suppressed emotion. She took two steps backward and
wound her hands behind the post of Daddy's old-fashioned bed.

Truly it was Tessibel's first day and first night!

"He air to be hanged dead?" she asked, the painful shiftiness of her
eyes settling questioningly upon the minister's face. "Aw, he air good,
Daddy Skinner air, gooder than ye be, with ye cross and ye crown that ye
sing about. Gooder than all ye whole church, if his gun did kill the
gamekeeper. We has our rights to live, to eat bread and beans, like ye
have, hain't we? If Daddy Skinner air hung, then Tessibel hangs too."

Here the tired young face drooped a little.

"Ye'll hang him will ye? Well! ye won't--cause--cause--"

Her red head flashed back upon the uncovered shoulders--the wild eyes
lifted a moment to the rocking rafters in the roof.

"If ye lives in the sky, Jesus, that cares for the dyin', take Daddy
Skinner and Tessibel--"

Her eyes dropped to the pan on the floor, against which the stiff body
of the toad lay, and she ended,--"And Frederick."

It was a prayer,--a rough prayer, from untaught lips, but through the
action which followed, it instantly lost its dignity. Tessibel forgot
her lesson--forgot all save the taunting face of the minister. She gave
her familiar leap in the air and came down with a cry upon t