Tess of the Storm Country

hirled into her face-then took himself off. Over the sha

whizzed about her ears as though they little feared her. The long branches of the weeping willow dragged themselves across the tin roof with a ghostly sound. This was Tessibel's night of heart experiences-her first day and her first night. Oh! to go back to yesterday, with the hidden fear of the student sleeping soundly in her breast and a Daddy, a dear stooping old Daddy. She slipped open the shanty door, lighted a candle and looked around. The frying pan la

ess remembered hearing how he had been carried to prison, twelve men had found him guilty of the crime and a

chers to his beard-and her wild eyed bronzeness caused her to give a startled ejaculation. Daddy was gone; and Frederick the toad, was her all. The thought of th

he unceasing waves in eternal laps, the rhythm soothing the ears of the squatter girl as her unfathomable gaze pierced the midnight gloom. But the weight of sorrow and longing on the s

the pe

or the

roused her as now-Daddy S

louse and retraced her steps to the shanty. She could never be lonely and quite without hope if Frederick were with her. Hadn't she loved him for four long months, and

but in Daddy's bed. And I'll just pretend ye air Daddy, and when ye croak with the daylight ye can have all th

was nothing to show the girl that he felt her presence. The silent awful pulsating of the toad manifested its dumb suffering. A candle flickered as she sought to solve the problem. The night wind flapped the dirty curtain and Tessibel turned her head slowly toward it. A bird's cry from somewhere in the weeping willow, came in through the window. With silent intensity, she dragged her body slowly across the floor toward the flattened reptile-above him she squatted-the gorgeous hair sweeping the filth strewn floor. Tess could mark the places where the beloved warts had been-she knew how many there were even t

the pe

or the

ad move grotesquely in the candlelight. Time after time the blinking eyes closed and flew o

the petitionate lips of the girl sent the song once more into the night, he f

ttered two great piercing shrieks, which sounded and resounded through the rafters of the shanty, out into the darkness and up to the ragged rocks.

nner, Dadd

ill longing, resounded th

, aw, aw F

out through the window-the flapping curtain with i

her through the window, from somewhere near the mud c

t? W

dirty shanty, looking upon an unkempt, copper-e