n the sky.... He were a-waitin' for her every day, and
she knowed she were a-goin' to die, 'cause--'cause she prayed every
night that God'd take her and the brat."

"Prayed? She prayed to die, when we all loved her so?" stammered
Frederick.

"Yep. She were a-lovin' the burnt student better'n anything else. And,
when women air a-lovin' like that--"

She ceased abruptly, and her own love for him attacked her as lightning
attacks an oak in the autumn. Teola Graves had gone willingly to the
burnt student, and Myra Longman had loved the ugly fisherman with a love
that hurt like hers.

No one asked the short-skirted, barefooted girl to finish her sentence.
The three men understood that her last passionate statement rang from
the depths of her woman's heart. Frederick lifted his head.

"Tess--Tessibel, I can only say with my father that we all love you for
what you have done for her."

His voice broke.

"And for myself, I say again, as I have said many times, that I--I love
you--with my whole soul!"

His fingers closed over hers in an intense, desperate clasp. How long
she had waited for him to tell her this once more! And he had confessed
his great love in the presence of Daddy Skinner and the big man from the
hill.

Her father watched her, this child whom but a year before he had left
almost a baby. She was a woman now, with a woman's voice and a woman's
love. The fisherman passed his hand over his face with a forlorn
gesture. Had he found his darling again but to lose her?

Impetuously Tess turned toward him, and met his misty gaze with her
tear-dimmed eyes. The student was still clinging to her hand.

"I air Daddy's brat," she whispered. "But I says," and she flashed
Frederick a lightning-like glance through the red lashes before she
dropped her eyes, and murmured, "but I says, as how I said before, that
I air yer squatter."

* * * * *

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