Tess of the Storm Country

Tess of the Storm Country, by
Grace Miller

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Title: Tess of the Storm Country
Author: Grace Miller White

Release Date: July 13, 2007 [eBook #22064]
Language: English
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TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY
by
GRACE MILLER WHITE
Illustrations by Howard Chandler Christy

New York Grosset & Dunlap Publishers
Made in the United States of America

Copyright, 1909, by W. J. WATT & COMPANY

WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY
FATHER

TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY
CHAPTER I
One September afternoon, not many years ago, three men sat on the
banks of Cayuga Lake cleaning the fish they had caught in their nets
the previous night. When they glanced up from their work, and looked
beyond the southern borders of the lake, they could see, rising from the
mantle of forestry, the towers and spires of Cornell University in Ithaca

City. An observer would have noticed a sullen look of hatred pass
unconsciously over their faces as their eyes lighted on the distant
buildings, for the citizens of Ithaca were the enemies of these squatter
fishermen and thought that their presence on the outskirts of the town
besmirched its fair fame. Not only did the summer cottages of the
townfolk that bordered the lake, look down disdainfully upon their
neighbors, the humble shanties of the squatter fishermen, but their
owners did all they could to drive the fishermen out of the land. None
of the squatters were allowed to have the title of the property upon
which their huts stood, yet they clung with death-like tenacity to their
homes, holding them through the rights of the squatter-law, which
conceded them the use of the land when once they raised a hut upon it.
Sterner and sterner the authorities of Ithaca had made the game laws
until the fishermen, to get the food upon which they lived, dared only
draw their nets by night. In the winter whilst the summer residents were
to be found again in the city, Nature herself made harder the lot of these
squatters, by sealing the lake with thick ice, but they faced the bitter
cold and frozen surroundings with stolid indifference.
A grim silence had reigned during which the three men had worked
with feverish haste, driven on by the vicissitudes of their unwholesome
lives. Moving his crooked legs upon the hot sand and closing a red lid
over one white blind eye, Ben Letts spoke viciously.
"Tess air that cussed," said he, "that she keeps on saying fishes can feel
when they gets cut. She air worse than that too."
"And she do say," put in Jake Brewer, grasping a large pickerel and
thrusting his blade into its quivering body after removing the scales,
"that it hurts her insides to see the critters wriggle under the knife. She
air that bad too."
Ben Letts scratched his head tentatively.
"She ain't had no bringin' up," he resumed, again plying the
sharp-bladed knife to his scaly victims, "and they do say as how when
she air in a tantrum she'll scratch her dad's face, jumpin' on his back
like a cat. Orn air a fool, I say."

"So says I too," agreed Brewer; "no wonder his shoulders air humped.
But you never hears as much as a grunt from him. He knows he ain't
never give her no bringin's up, that's why."
"Some folks has give their kids bringin's up," interposed Ben Letts with
a glance at the third man, who was industriously cleaning fish and had
not yet spoken. "And they hain't turned out no better than Tessibel
will."
At this the industrious one turned.
"I spose ye be a hittin' at my poor Myry, Ben," he muttered. "I spose ye
be, but God'll some time let me kill the man, and then ye won't be
hittin' at her no more, 'cause there won't be nothin' to hit at. It air dum
hard to keep a girl from the wrong way, love her all ye will."
For an instant Ben Letts dropped his head.
"We always wondered who he was, but more wonder has