Tess of the Storm Country | Page 7

She had

felt the cruel blasts of the winter winds upon her chilblained feet, for
she had never known the luxury of shoes. She had also seen the dying
and understood what it meant to turn a longing face toward heaven,
with a burning desire to know what was beyond.
Such a voice as Tessibel's had never been heard upon Cayuga lake. Ben
Letts said it put him in mind of listening to the wild cry of a lost soul,
while Myra Longman could hear only the songs of angels in the
exquisite tones which fell, pure and sweet, from the red lips. Tess knew
nothing of breath power, nothing of trained trilling tones, but nature
had given her both and like the birds of the air she used them.
The girl had not moved from beside the stone near which she had fallen.
The night was so strange, so different from any night Tessibel had ever
known. Her whole idea of life had been altered that day by the word of
a fisherman, and the woman's heart grew larger and larger, until the
squatter girl felt that it was going to burst. Something crawled over her
bare foot and brought her to her senses. Leaning over she drew to her
lap a long, slimy lizard, which she held caressingly in her fingers. She
lifted him high up and looked at him through the moonlight.
"Green," she said slowly, "ain't he a dandy. But I don't dare carry him
even a little way for fear he'll lose his house. I bet he has a pile of green
babies."
Dropping the lizard beside the rock, she sped away.
Just before reaching the Longman cabin, she raised her voice and sang
again,
"Rescue the perishin', Care for the dyin'."
Some one opened the door and she bounded in.
"Glad ye come, Tessibel," said Mrs. Longman, a small wizened old
woman. "The brat air sick to-day. He does nothin' but squall so that my
head air a bustin' the hours through. Give him to Tessibel, Myry."

"After she air rested a spell," replied Myra, who resembled her mother,
but was smaller and thinner. "He seems to have a pain, Tess."
"Mebbe he has," responded Tessibel, "give him to me."
The wee boy stopped his tears immediately. His back grew limp and
his fists opened out as Tessibel began to sing. This time the song was,
"Did ye ever go into an Irishman's shanty?"
The child fell asleep and Tessibel laid him gently in the box prepared
for him. Bed room was scarce in the huts of the fishermen and the
small members of the family slept on rope beds, let down from the
ceiling. But Myra's child, still too tender and always sick, slept in a box
which his grandfather, "Satisfied" Longman, had made for him as soon
as he was born.
"It air a seemly night for the men to fish," commented Myra when
Tessibel had seated herself again. "I air always a hopin' that nothin' will
happen to none of them."
"The hull bunch air cute," assured Tessibel, "and Daddy can row faster
than any man on this here lake."
"But when them game men gets after 'em with the permit to shoot,
that's what I fears," complained Mrs. Longman--and she sighed.
The fisherwoman's life she had led had been harder than most women
bore, for Ezra was going a crooked path, while Myra, well--the brat
slept in the cradle. Both girls saw her glance toward it and read her
thoughts.
Myra's face deepened in color, Tessibel hummed a tune.
"'Taint no use to try to bring up children anywheres decent," the woman
broke in sharply, after a silent moment. "God! but to see one's own--"
"Ma," Myra's voice was pleading, "it air over and ye said--"
"I knows I did, and so did yer Daddy. But I ain't thinkin' only of ye

to-night, Myra, look at the mess that Ezry's a makin' of things, and just
'cause ye won't marry him, Tessibel."
"I ain't never goin' to marry no one," said Tess sullenly; "goin' to stay
with Daddy."
"Yer Daddy won't live allers," interposed Mrs. Longman, "and what's
more, yer better off with a man what will look after ye as Ezy will. Be
ye a thinkin' of it at all, Tessibel?"
The girl shook her head.
"Nope, 'taint no use; don't like Ezy anyway."
"Ezry ain't the worst boy in the world," defended the mother; "if the
right woman gets him, Tess, he'll make her a good man. Ye couldn't
think of tryin' him, could ye?"
Tessibel shook her head again. She shuddered perceptibly, and Myra
thought she realized the feeling in the girl's heart.
"Don't bother her, ma, don't bother--"
"If ye'd a bothered a little yerself, Myra," broke in the