The Secret of the Storm Country | Page 3

in the shack, "what stood by Tess. She allers says Tess
air a goin' to surprise us all. She says as how the brat'll be rich an' have
a fine home. I dunno--but old Moll do tell the future right good when
she looks in the pot."
"She told the brat I were comin' home from Auburn," added Skinner,
"when it looked certain I were goin' to hang."
Longman came out of the shack with a pan in his hands.
"Yep," he corroborated. "An' she told ma years ago she'd lose her brats
in a storm. Old Moll air a wise woman, all right."
The dish of beans in his hand, the Bible-backed fisherman directed his
steps toward his own home, some distance away beyond the ragged
rocks.
The old squatter walked slowly. His health had broken in prison and his
strength seemed hardly sufficient to move the big body. The path, an
outcropping ledge of the precipitous cliff, was very narrow because of
the unusually high level of the water in the lake. Picking his way
slowly, he considered reminiscently the events which had almost
destroyed him.

He recalled the long years of monotonous existence in the shack, the
hard nights pulling the nets and the varied scrapes Tess had tumbled
into. Then, suddenly, came the shooting of the game keeper, his own
arrest, trial and conviction. The white glare of hateful publicity had
been thrown, without warning, upon him and his motherless brat. He'd
been torn away from his quiet haunts at the lake side and shut up in the
narrow confines of a fetid cell. The enforced separation from his
daughter, at the critical period between girl and womanhood, had left
her alone in the shanty and exposed her to countless perils and
hardships. Unmitigated calamities, especially the long imprisonment,
they had seemed at the time, but the event proved otherwise.
Friends had arisen and helped him establish his innocence and win his
pardon. The responsibilities thrown upon the squatter girl had been met
with love and courage and had disciplined her high temper and
awakened her ambition. The dirt and disorder that had formerly
obtained in the shack had disappeared. Her housewifely arts had
transformed the hut into a comfortable home, rough to be sure, small
and inadequate, but immaculate and satisfactory.
The shanty stood on a little point of land projecting into the lake. Huge
weeping willows shrouded it from the sun in summer. They mourned
and murmured of the past, when the breezes of morning and evening
stirred their whispering leaves. Their bare limbs thrashed and pounded
the tin roof when the storm winds tore down the lake. In front and to
one side, Tessibel's new privet hedge shone a dark, dusky green, and
the flower beds were beginning to show orderly life through the
blackish mold. The shack itself was rather more pretentious than most
of the squatter shanties. It had two rooms and was thoroughly battened
against the storms.
Coming into the path, Orn met his daughter and went with her to the
house.
The greatest change the year had brought was in the girl herself. She
had ripened into the early maturity common to the squatter woman. She
was no longer the red-haired tatterdemalion who had romped over the
rocks and quarreled with the boys of the Silent City. Her tom-boy days,

amid the ceaseless struggles against the hardships of the Storm Country,
gave to her slender body strength and lent to it poise and grace. Bright
brown eyes lighted by loving intelligence illumined her face, tanned by
sun and wind, but very sweet and winsome, especially when the
curving red lips melted into a smile. A profusion of burnished red curls,
falling about her shoulders almost to her hips, completed the vivid
picture. Tess of the Storm Country, the animate expression of the joy
and beauty of the lake side in spring, was the boast of the Silent City.
* * * * *
Late that same night, Tessibel lay asleep in the front room of the shanty.
Four miles to the south, Ithaca, too, slept,--the wholesome sleep of a
small country town, while Cayuga Lake gleamed and glistened in the
moonlight, as if fairies were tumbling it with powdered fingers. Above
both town and span of water, Cornell University loomed darkly on the
hill, the natural skyline sharply cut by its towers and spires.
An unusual sound awakened her. She lifted her lids and glanced about
drowsily, then propped herself on one elbow. Her sleep-laden eyes fell
upon the white light slanting across the rough shanty floor. Suddenly,
like a dark ghost, a shadow darted into it--the shadow of a human head.
At the first glimpse at it, Tessibel looked cautiously toward the window,
and there, as in a frame, was