Tess of the Storm Country | Page 5

as him than you, Ezry Longman, does yer hear, does
yer hear?"
The lumbering body raised itself from the ground. The squint eyes were
almost closed, only a glint of the gray ring that surrounded the pupil
showing between the lids.
"Ye think that ye can hide from me what ye be a doin'," burst out Ezra.
"Why did ye name that toad after the student of Minister Graves? Just
'cause he wears nice clothes and don't do no honest rakin' of hay, nor
catchin' a fish only by trollin'. Ye loves that feller, that's what ye does."
Bewilderment leapt alive in the girl's brown eyes. The shade deepened
almost to black as the thought the boy had planted in the sensitive mind
took root and grew. Then the dirty young face flooded with crimson
which tinted the rounded neck and colored the low forehead, and Tess
dropped down beside the log and covered her face with her hands. The
fisherman was so surprised that he uttered not a word while the wild

storm broke over the girl's heart, dying away in a smothered moan.
Without a glance at the boy, she lifted herself slowly from the earth and
walking, erect and tall, into her father's hut, closed the door with a bang.
She slipped the leather fastening into its place and dazedly adjusted the
iron peg in the opening to hold it. Tessibel's heart had manifested its
hitherto unknown burden and the woman lived amid the dirt and
squalor of the fisherman's cabin.
Tessibel's peremptory leaving and the hauteur in her face were so
foreign to her that Ezra Longman did not dare follow. He leaned upon
his rake looking after her, his gray eyes gathered into an
incomprehensive squint. Had Tess again cuffed his ears, he would have
been secretly delighted; but this manner, so unlike her, seemed to take
her as far above him as that flock of black crows yonder, flying to the
forest to find shelter for the night.
"Tessibel," he called helplessly, under his breath, but Tessibel did not
hear. He limped away not knowing that she had passed as effectually
out of his life as if she had not dwelt in the rickety cabin on his right.
CHAPTER III
Ben Letts rose to his feet after cleaning his jack-knife in the water and
took the same path around the mud cellar which Tessibel had taken.
The cabin door was closed--Tess nowhere in sight. Ben had
intended--Ben didn't know just what his intentions were. He stopped
short when his eyes fell upon Frederick's log. It took a long time for a
thought to be born in the dense brain of the fisherman, but one was
there, for the cross eyes opened and the red tongue licked greedily at
the thick chops like that of a wolf when he comes upon prey for which
he does not have to fight. Letts looked sneakily at the hut window
where hung the remnants of a ragged curtain--all was quiet. He quickly
ran his long arm into the opening of the log and with a snap of his teeth
drew out the high-backed toad.
Holding the reptile in his hand, he slunk behind the willow tree and
stood an instant in abstract hesitation. Suddenly his fiendish face

became flooded with the exultation of a plan fully matured. He let the
toad fall to the ground, needing both hands to draw the blade of his
jack-knife. Frederick hopped vigorously along in the direction of his
log, but Ben, gorged with the instincts of an inquisitor, snatched him up
as he was about to escape. After divesting Frederick of all the
ornaments which nature had given him, the man allowed him to hop
about, grinning, as he watched the rapid leaps of the toad. Frederick
had forgotten the path to his log, he could only turn around and around
as if he had been born to radiate in a circle. Ben could have watched
this tumbling toad all night, so great was his joy at the sight, but it was
getting dark and soon the call would come for the fishermen to gather
for the netting and he would be expected to go.
Taking the toad gingerly up from the earth, he returned it to the hole in
the log, and with but a hasty glance at the dirty curtain which hung
limp and ugly at the cabin window, sneaked away.
* * * * *
After leaving Ezra Longman, Tessibel stood in the cabin for one single
moment with the terrible thought which the boy had planted there,
burning in her brain. She had but a few times seen the minister's son
who lived in the big house on the hill and not even to herself had she
mentioned that he