wn head appeared and the wide eyes stared into his.
Skinner quietly drew his child to the stone sill and placed his fingers
over her lips to enjoin silence. Tess understood and even drew softer
breaths, holding tightly to the beloved hands.

"I comed for kisses on the bill, Daddy," she breathed. "Tess ... air
lonely without ye."

The livid, shaking lips met the quivering mouth through the iron rods. A
long, long kiss, such as Tess had wanted quieted her suffering a little.
It was the same old Daddy whom she was going to save by praying. She had
asked to see him only a minute, and the student's God had granted her
prayer.

She whispered again, shivering and shaking with the cold.

"Did ye kill the gamekeeper, Daddy?"

The gray head shook the answer, "no."

"If ye did ye didn't mean to, did ye?"

The two negative replies made Tessibel's heart bound. It would be easier
for God to help him if he had not committed a crime, and for no instant
did she doubt his word. She kissed him again passionately, clinging to
his lips with all the young growing emotion in her body.

The squatter clung desperately to the body of his child. He could not
let her go, fearing she would fall to the hard stones below, but he knew
that she stood in danger of being discovered and dared not detain her.

"Kin ye get down again?" he whispered.

"Yep, Daddy Skinner, and ye ain't goin' to hang, 'cause some one what
can, air goin' to help ye."

"Who air he?"

"God ... up there!" and Tessibel motioned with her hand toward the dark
sky. "He says as how He helps folks like us ... that a cross was beared
for us ... and I says to Him to-night, and I says every day till ye
come back to the shanty ... that He lets ye free, Daddy.... I asks the
sheriff to-morrow if I can come afternoons to see ye. And, Daddy, I
holds the shanty till ye come home."

He kissed her small pinched face again and again--and took his arms
away. Tess slipped down the creeper and when she reached the ground
called softly:

"I air here, Daddy Skinner."

She saw him pressing against the bars, his lips shaking and his eyes
closely shut as if he were stumblingly offering a prayer for the child
of his fisherman soul.

CHAPTER IX

The fraternities of Cornell University gave home and social comforts to
students, rich and popular enough to be invited to join them. Each
fraternity had its own spacious house, with its staff of servants, where
the members lived during