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Updated: June 21, 2025
"Orn Skinner," he finished, turning again to the fisherman, "twelve men have found you guilty of murder in the first degree. The court, then, passes its sentence upon you: you are to hang by the neck until you are dead." The ponderous form of the doomed man straightened as though unafraid, whilst the commotion increased Tess was madly tearing her way through detaining hands.
The speaker turned a serious face to the third member of the party. "Ner you nuther, eh, Orn?" Orn Skinner was an enormous man, some six and a half feet tall. Two great humps on his shoulders accentuated the breadth and thickness of his chest while they tended to conceal the length of his arms. A few months before he'd been in the death house at Auburn.
Tess cheered the dwarf's despairing mood by a reassuring smile and confident nods of the shining curls. "Nope," she promptly promised. And, "Nope," repeated Orn, grimly. "Git back under the bed, now, old man. Any minute Sandy might be comin' in. Ye can't depend on that squatter. He'd steal the pennies off'n his dead mammy's eyes."
When Tessibel came in from the mud cellar, Frederick lay with his face toward the wall, Orn Skinner's soiled blankets wrapped closely about his shoulders. Tessibel placed the leather strap over the staple in the door, and barred up for the night. For almost an hour Tessibel lay thinking deeply, her brain alive with the past rapid happening of events.
Them two didn't amount to much to my way o' thinkin', but their pa an' ma set considerable store by 'em ... Ben Letts were a bad 'un, too. It used to make me plumb ugly to see 'im botherin' Tess when ye was shet up, Orn, an' him all the time the daddy of Myry's brat." "Yep, Ben were bad," agreed Skinner.
Again the student was oblivious of his love for the profession he had chosen; forgot that the one book he had studied more than any other taught him that the God he worshiped would avenge all wrong. In one step he was upon the fisherman. He lifted Orn Skinner's stool, and brought it down with a crash upon Ben's head. Tess uttered a sharp, frightened cry, speeding to interrupt another blow.
"She ain't had no bringin' up," he resumed, again plying the sharp-bladed knife to his scaly victims, "and they do say as how when she air in a tantrum she'll scratch her dad's face, jumpin' on his back like a cat. Orn air a fool, I say." "So says I too," agreed Brewer; "no wonder his shoulders air humped. But you never hears as much as a grunt from him.
Orn lifted one great shoulder. "Ye ain't got nothin' on me, Burnett," he snarled defiantly, "but I know ye wouldn't be comin' 'round here if ye didn't have somethin' to come fer." The warden shoved his grim face so close to the speaker's that he drew back, intimidated. "Sure, I come for something," snorted Burnett, viciously. "Then peel it off," answered Skinner, deep in his throat.
Augusta Hall made but one remark on her way home from church. "Wednesday evening, I am going to show Dominie Graves that he can't rule every woman in Ithaca, and I want you to go with me, dearie." Orn Skinner was to be taken to prison the Monday after the famous sermon preached by Dominie Graves.
Now Hoskuld came back from the Thing and heard these tidings, and was very much displeased. But seeing that his near akin were concerned in the matter, he quieted down and let things alone. Olaf and his companions had a good voyage, and came to Norway. Orn urges Olaf to go to the court of King Harald, who, he said, bestowed goodly honour on men of no better breeding than Olaf was.
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