,
as the witch dug it upward from the bottom of the kettle.

"A prison cell and a man," ended Moll.

"Be there humps?" gasped Tess.

An acquiescent nod came from the gray-grizzled head. Tessibel wound her
fingers about the arm-bone of the hag.

"Air there a cross with a Christ hangin' on it?"

The witch looked deeper into the dark mixture, her eyes squinting to
narrow slits, and Tess continued:

"A hangin' Christ that air hurt, and be there thorns a-diggin' in Him?"

Deeper and deeper into the sizzling pot stared the faded blue eyes of
the hag, the dark wide-spread ones of the girl following every movement
of Ma Moll's hand.

"Aye, there air a cross for ye, brat, to carry on yer back--"

"Air there no Christ a bearin' one for Daddy?"

Suddenly the door burst open, and the raging wind flickered out the
candle. It had been so sudden that Tess screamed, and the witch muttered
a curse. The rain tore its way through the small dirty room; the bats
loosened their hold upon the wooden rafters and circled the darkness,
first into the open, then into the room--against and away from
Tessibel's face, until the girl broke into wild weeping.

Ma Moll had failed to find the cross. The wind forcing the door bespoke
evil for Daddy. Without the student's Christ how could she save him?

"Go home, brat," ordered the hag. "Go home, there air a cross with a
Christ hangin' to it, and there were a dead man without humps."

Out into the rain the sound of the hag's words ringing in her ears, the
whizzing bats for the first time filling her with a strange mysterious
fear, Tessibel went. She turned into the dark forest of which she was
not afraid, and crossing the gorges again, sought the upper hill which
led to the tracks.

CHAPTER VIII

Elias Graves was pastor of one of the largest churches in Ithaca. His
family consisted of his wife, his son Frederick, and his daughter Teola,
a girl of sixteen, and little Babe, the spoiled pet of the family.
Besides a beautiful town rectory, he owned the lake farm and held the
title to the small piece of property upon which Orn Skinner squatted.
That the hut and its filth injured his own magnificent cottage no one
denied.

It was true he only spent ten or twelve weeks of the summer in the lake
house, but every man desired his own. For several years there had been a
continual fight between the pastor and the fisherman--Orn Skinner
answering the minister with the squatter law of the st