st he thought he was dreaming.
He looked again--looked at her--at the child--and paled to his ears.
Tessibel was holding the infant up toward him, with a beseeching
expression in her eyes that staggered him.

Teola had seen Tess pass, and had caught a glimpse of the thin child
upon her hands. The pursed baby lips, from which hung the useless sugar
rag, made her lower her head to the prayer cushion, shuddering
violently. Frederick had also seen the squatter--everyone in the church
had seen her, and the silence grew wider and wider, until even breathing
was hushed to catch her words.

Her low, sweet voice began to speak; it thrilled through the
congregation like the song of angels.

[Illustration: "BE YE GOIN' TO LET HIM GO A PLACE WHERE GOD CAN'T FIND
HIM?"]

"I has brought ye a dyin' brat, Dominie Graves," began Tess with
shaking voice, "who has got to be sprinkled, or he can't go to Heaven."

The vast silence of the edifice echoed her petition.

The gaping minister never once took his eyes from her face, and made no
move to answer her.

"It air a-dyin', I say," she went on, "and I wants ye to put the water
on it."

So deadly in earnest was the girl that a sob broke out in the back of
the church. The lithe, barefooted squatter, and the feeble, dying child
offered a living picture of pathos, which with its tragedy slowly dawned
upon the more sensitive minds, silently telling its tale of human
suffering. Minister Graves refused to answer her. He wore the same
expression of scorn Tess had seen in the student when she had
acknowledged the child as hers.

"Be ye goin' to sprinkle him?" she demanded steadfastly, her voice
growing stronger with her emotions. "Be ye?"

"No, I'm not." Graves' voice fell like the sound of a deep-toned bell.

"Be ye goin' to let him go to a place where God can't find him? Be ye?"
Tess entreated.

Anger and revolt glinted through the golden-brown of her eyes; she
swayed back a little from the font, still holding out the babe.

"He air so little," she pleaded with a choke, "and so awful sick. Mebbe
he won't live till mornin'. He can't hurt the others, now they air done
with the water, can he?"

She peeped into the marble basin, and lifted her eyes to his face.

"There air lots of water left. Be there other babies wantin' it worse
than this one?"

She turned half-way round, and faced the wall of white faces, sending
the question out in high-pitched tones.

Then Graves spoke wit