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Updated: June 24, 2025
The minister's daughter whispered to the crouching squatter: "Tessibel, can can you ever forgive me?" Tess stood up and took a long breath. Teola noted how the night had changed the brilliant coloring to a whiteness that startled her. An agony of remorse broke over her, and, dropping upon her knees, she wept upon the face of little Dan.
He was sorry, this minister who had persecuted her father and herself sorry for Teola, sorry for the brat! "The Dominie ain't likin' Daddy and me, though," she murmured. "But the student air a-likin' me!" For the next two miles she sang lustily, childishly, with the complete abandon of a girl without a burden. Daddy Skinner was coming home, and God had given her back the student.
"Aren't they alright where they are?" hesitated Teola. "Skinner killed the gamekeeper to-night, and the girl is alone in the shanty. Father doesn't seem to realize that they have souls to be saved as well as the rest of the world." Teola thought an instant before answering. "They are so dirty," she said at last. "That's true," Frederick reflected, "but nevertheless they are human."
There rose in the squatter's heart a vast respect for Myra Longman, who had taken her child from the beginning of its tiny life, and defied the babbling tongues of the settlement gossips. Teola Graves, although of a different class, was no less a mother she would do the same. Tessibel sat up, waiting for the confession. Why was the minister's daughter so silent? why so deathly looking?
Here was a holy personage to the squatter, touched with the finger of the mysterious God the student worshiped. And was she not the sister of Frederick, and had not Teola given her coffee from her own cup that winter night?
Transfixed, Tess stood for many minutes where Young had left her. A shadow dropped upon the path. Teola, pale and ill, came toward her, and she did not move. "My father and brother have gone to Ithaca, and I Tessibel! Tess, don't look at me that way! Don't! don't!" "You forgot to tell him," dropped from the squatter's lips. "No, I didn't forget.
Never for one moment in the presence of Teola's brother had he forgotten how could he ever forget! But he did love Teola Graves madly and wished with all his soul that he were through college.
Tess swung her body round upon the shanty floor, turning cloudy, rebuking eyes upon Teola. She, Tessibel Skinner, crouching squatter-like over Dan Jordan's baby, had sworn never to tell Frederick his sister's secret, and no thought of doing so entered her mind. The minister's daughter must speak the truth. The mother of the babe would answer the question put by the student.
After that the party broke up, for the merriment had died in Tessibel's grief. An impression had been made upon the thoughtless boys and girls, and a shadow rested on each face as they bade "good-night" to their young hostess. "She's the prettiest girl I ever saw," confided Teola to Frederick afterward; "her eyes are the color of a marigold."
The strong arm pressed about the wearied little form reassuringly. "And you can bet, papa Graves," put in Babe, "that I'll go with mamma any old day, that's what I will." Teola stood irresolutely, looking first at Frederick, then at her father. She went toward the minister and almost whispered, "Father, let me speak!
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