le that the fishermaid lifted her eyes to see who sorrowed with her.

The squatter covered the white fingers with tears and kisses. Then she
struggled to her feet, the nails in Daddy's boots scraping the polished
floor, making long white marks. To Tessibel there were no other persons
in the room save Frederick and his beautiful sister. She made a queer
upward movement with her head, wiping the tears away with the tattered
sleeve.

"I was afeared ye'd forget Daddy Skinner," she murmured. "The big man
from the hill said like you did. And I says it air prayin' time and I
comed."

She had forgotten the tears of a few minutes before, forgotten that
twenty pairs of searching youthful eyes watched her every movement and
mentally criticized her, from the masses of long hair to the rock-torn
boots on her feet. She only remembered the student--that he was smiling
into her eyes, and that, his sister, too, Teola Graves, had sympathized
with her.

With a radiant, grateful smile, she turned to go, the door opening under
her eager grasp. It was here that Dan Jordan spoke:

"Won't Miss Skinner have some coffee?"

Tessibel looked at him with an incredulous glance. He, too, had come
forward and stood with his kindly gray eyes fixed upon her face.

"Yes, yes, of course," hurriedly put in Teola, "pardon me--I forgot....
You shall have my cup.... Here, Tessibel! I may call you that, mayn't I?
Please drink some of mine."

Teola held the cup invitingly to the shivering lips, and Tessibel
swallowed it down in one gulp.

"I air goin' now," she said desperately, wiping away coffee drops that
lingered upon her face, "and ye ain't goin' to forget?"

This last was to Frederick, and he shook his head emphatically. He would
not forget again; he would make the girl's father a special medium to
establish a line of faith between the God he professed to love and
himself--the quality of which should be no less than the one that
Tessibel had cultivated during her weary weeks of waiting.

No thought entered anyone's mind of asking the girl if she were afraid
of the dark night--she seemed so much a part of the darkness, of the
falling snow and thrashing trees, that she was allowed to depart without
a question. As he stood on the Rectory steps, the clicking of the big
boots came to Frederick long after the slender form had disappeared from
sight.

After that the party broke up, for the merriment had died in Tessibel's
grief. An impression had b