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I understand." "I wanted to save you, no matter at what cost. To-night I tried to prevent you going out there, for I feared you might meet him. I knew he was very near. Then, when you had gone, my fear grew and grew. There I sat, thinking over everything. Oh, if I only had a friend, I thought; some
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one to help me. Then, as I sat, dazed, distracted, the 'phone rang. It was your brother." "Yes, go on, dear." "He told me he wanted to see me; he begged me to come at once. I thought of you, of your danger, of some terrible mishap. I was terrified. I went." She paused a moment, as if the recital
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was infinitely painful to her, then she went on. "I found my way to his room. My mind was full of you, of that man, of how to save you. I did not think of myself, of my position. At first I was too agitated to speak. He bade me sit down, compose myself. His manner was quiet, grave. Again
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I feared for you. He asked me to excuse him for a moment, and left the room. He seemed to be gone an age, while I sat there, trying to fight down my terror. The suspense was killing me. Then he came back. He closed and locked the door. All at once I heard a step outside, a knock. 'Hush!
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go in there,' he said. He opened the door. I heard him speaking to some one. I waited, then you burst in on me. You know the rest." "Yes, yes." "As for your brother, I've tried, oh, so hard, to be nice to him for your sake. I liked him; I wanted to be to him as a sister, but
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never an unfaithful thought has entered my head, never a wrong feeling sullied my heart. I've been true to you. You told me once of a love that gives all and asks for nothing; a love that would turn its back on friends and kindred for the sake of its beloved. You said: 'His smile will be your rapture, his
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frown your anguish. For him will you dare all, bear all. To him will you cling in sorrow, suffering and poverty. Living, you would follow him round the world; dying, you would desire but him.'--Well, I think I love you like that." "Oh, my dear, my dear!" "I want to bring you happiness, but I only bring you trouble, sorrow.
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Sometimes, for your sake, I wish we had never met." She turned to Garry. "As for you, you've done me a great wrong. I can never forget it. Will you go now, and leave us in peace?" His head was bent, so that I could not see his face. "Can you not forgive?" he groaned. She shook her head sadly.
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"No, I am afraid I can never forgive." "Can I do nothing to atone?" "No, I'm afraid your punishment must be--that you can do nothing." He said never a word. She turned to me: "Come, my husband, we will go." I was opening the door to leave him forever. Suddenly I heard a step coming up the stairs, a heavy,
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hurried tread. I looked down a moment, then I pushed her back into the room. "Be prepared, Berna," I said quietly; "here comes Locasto." There we waited, Garry and I, and between us Berna. We heard that heavy tread come up, up the creaking stairway, stumble a moment, then pause on the landing. There was something ominous, something pregnant in
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that pause. The steps halted, wavered a little, then, inflexible as doom, on they came towards us. The next instant the door was thrown open, and Locasto stood in the entrance. Even in that brief moment I was struck by the change in him. He seemed to have aged by twenty years. He was gaunt and lank as a starved
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timber wolf; his face was hollow almost as a death's head; his hair was long and matted, and his eyes burned with a strange, unnatural fire. In that dark, aquiline face the Indian was never more strongly revealed. He limped, and I noticed his left hand was gloved. From under his bristling brows he glared at us. As he swayed
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there he minded me of an evil beast, a savage creature, a mad, desperate thing. He reeled in the doorway, and to steady himself put out his gloved hand. Then with a malignant laugh, the fleering laugh of a fiend, he stepped into the room. "So! Seems as if I'd lighted on a pretty nest of love-birds. Ho! ho! my
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sweet! You're not satisfied with one lover, you must have two. Well, you are going to be satisfied with one from now on, and that's Jack Locasto. I've stood enough from you, you white-faced jade. You've haunted me, you've put some kind of a spell on me. You've lured me back to this land, and now I'm going to have
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you or die! You've played with me long enough. The jig's up. Stand out from between those two. Stand out, I say! March out of that door." She only shrank back the farther. "You won't come, curse you; you won't come, you milk-faced witch, with your great eyes that bore holes in me, that turn my heart to fire, that
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make me mad. You won't come. Stand back there, you two, and let the girl come." We shielded her. "Ha! that's it--you defy me. You won't let me get her. Well, it'll be all the worse for her. I'll make her life a hell. I'll beat her. You won't stand back. You, the dark one--don't I know you; haven't I
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hated you more than the devil hates a saint; hated you worse than bitter poison? These three black years you've balked me, you've kept her from me. Oh, I've itched to kill you times without number, and I've spared you. But now it's my call. Stand back there, stand back I say. Your time's come. Here's where I shoot." His
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hand leapt up and I saw it gripped a revolver. He had me covered. His face was contorted with devilish triumph, and I knew he meant to kill. At last, at last my time had come. I saw his fingers twitching on the trigger, I gazed into the hollow horror of that barrel. My heart turned to ice. I could
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not breathe. Oh, for a respite, a moment--Ugh!... he pulled the trigger, and, _at the same instant, Garry sprang at him_! What had happened? The shot rang in my ears. I was still standing there. I felt no wound. I felt no pain. Then, as I stared at my enemy, I heard a heavy fall. Oh, God! there at my
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feet lay Garry, lay in a huddled, quivering heap, lay on his face, and in his fair hair I saw a dark stain start and spread. Then, in a moment, I realised what my brother had done. I fell on my knees beside him. "Garry, Garry!" I moaned. I heard Berna scream, and I saw that Locasto was coming for
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me. He was a man no longer. He had killed. He was a brute, a fury, a devil, mad with the lust of slaughter. With a snarl he dashed at me. Again I thought he was going to shoot, but no! He raised the heavy revolver and brought it crashing down on my head. I felt the blow fall, and
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with it my strength seemed to shoot out of me. My legs were paralysed. I could not move. And, as I lay there in a misty daze, he advanced on Berna. There she stood at bay, a horror-stricken thing, weak, panting, desperate. I saw him corner her. His hands were stretched out to clutch her; a moment more and he
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would have her in his arms, a moment--ah! With a suddenness that was like a flash she had raised the heavy reading-lamp and dashed it in his face. I heard his shriek of fear; I saw him fall as the thing crashed between his eyes; I saw the flames spurt and leap. High in the air he rose, awful in
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his agony. He was in a shroud of fire; he was in a pool of flame. He howled like a dog and fell over on the bed. Then suddenly the oil-soaked bedding caught. The curtains seemed to leap and change into flame. As he rolled and roared in his agony, the blaze ran up the walls, and caught the roof.
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Help, help! the room was afire, was burning up. Fire! Fire! Out in the corridor I heard a great running about, shouting of men, screaming of women. The whole place seemed to be alive, panic-stricken, frenzied with fear. Everything was in flames now, burning fiercely, madly, and there was no stopping them. The hotel was burning, and I, too, must
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burn. What a horrible end! Oh, if I could only do something! But I could not move. From the waist down I was like a dead man. Where was Berna? Pray God she was safe. I could not cry for aid. The room was reeling round and round. I was faint, dizzy, helpless. The hotel was ablaze. In the streets
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below crowds were gathering. People were running up and down the stairway, fighting to get free, mad with terror, leaping from the windows. Oh, it was awful, to burn, to burn! I seemed to be caged in flames that were darting at me savagely, spitefully. Would nobody save me? Yes, some one was trying to save me, was dragging my
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body across the floor. Consciousness left me, and it seemed for ages I lay in a stupor. When I opened my eyes again some one was still tugging at me. We were going down the stairway, and on all sides of us were sheets of flapping flame. I was wrapped in a blanket. How had it got there? Who was
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that dark figure pulling at me so desperately, trying to lift me, staggering a few paces with me, stumbling blindly on? Brave one, noble one, whoever you be! Foolhardy one, reckless one, whoever you be! Save yourself while yet there is time. Leave me to my fate. But, oh, the agony of it to burn, to burn ...! * *
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* * * Another desperate effort and we are almost at the door. Flames are darting at us like serpents, leaping kitten-like at our heels. Above us is a billowy canopy of fire soaring upward with a vast crackling roar. Fiery splinters shoot around us, while before us is a black pit of smoke. Smooth walls of fire uprear about
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us. We are in a cavern of fire, and in another moment it will engulf us. Oh, my rescuer, a last frenzied effort! We are almost at the door. Then I am lifted up and we both tumble out into the street. Not a second too soon, for, like a savage beast foiled of its prey, a blast of flame
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shoots after us, and the doorway is a gulf of blazing wrath. * * * * * I am lying in the snow, lying on a blanket, and some one holds my head. "Berna, is that you?" She nods. She does not speak. I shudder as I look at her. Her face is like a great burn, a black mask
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in which her eyes and teeth gleam whitely.... "Oh, Berna, Berna, and it was you that dragged me out...!" * * * * * My eyes go to the fiery hell in front. As I look the roof crashes in and we are showered by falling sparks. I see a fireman run back. He is swathed in flame. Madly he
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rolls in the snow. The hotel is like a cascade of flame; it spouts outward like water, beautiful golden water. In its centre is a wonderful whirlpool. I see the line of a black girder leap out, and hanging over it a limp, charred shape. A moment it hangs uncertainly, then plunges downward into the roasting heart of the pit.
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And I know it for Locasto. * * * * * Oh, Berna, Berna! I can't bear to look at her. Why did she do it? It's pitiful, pitiful.... The fire is spreading. Right and left it swings and leaps in giant strides. Sudden flames shoot out, curl over and roll like golden velvet down the black faces of the
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buildings. The fire leaps the street. All is pandemonium now. Mad with fear and excitement, men and women rave and curse and pray. Water! water! is the cry; but no water comes. Suddenly a mob of terror-goaded men comes surging down the street. They bring the long hose line that connects with the pump-station on the river. Hurrah! now they
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will soon have the flames under control. Water, water is coming. The line is laid and a cry goes up to turn on the water. Hurry there! But no water comes. What can be the matter? Then the dread whisper goes round that the man in charge of the pumping-station has neglected his duty, and the engine fires are cold.
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A howl of fury and despair goes up to the lurid heavens. Women wring their hands and moan; men stand by in a stupor of hopeless agony. And the fire, as if it knew of its victory, leaps up in a roaring ecstasy of triumph. There we watched, Berna and I, lying in the snow that melts all around us
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in the fierce, scorching glare. Through the lurid rift of smoke I can see the friendly stars. Against that curtain of blaze, strangely beautiful in its sinuous strength, I watch the black silhouettes of men running hither and thither like rats, gutting the houses, looting the stores, tearing the hearts out of the homes. The fire seems a great bird,
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and from its nest of furnace heat it spreads its flapping wings over the city. Yes, there is no hope. The gold-born city is doomed. From where I lie the scene is one long vista of blazing gables, ribs and rafters hugged by tawny arms of fire. Squat cabins swirling in mad eddies of flame; hotels, dance-halls, brothels swathed and
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smothered in flame-rent blankets of swirling smoke. There is no hope. The fire is a vast avenger, and before its wrath the iniquity of the tenderloin is swept away. That flimsy hive of humanity, with its sins and secrets and sorrows, goes up in smoke and ashes to the silent stars. The gold-born city is doomed. Yet, as I lay
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there, it seemed to me like a judgment, and that from its ruins would arise a new city, clean, upright, incorruptible. Yes, the gold-camp would find itself. Even as the gold, must it pass through the furnace to be made clean. And from the site where in the olden days the men who toiled for the gold were robbed by
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every device of human guile, a new city would come to be--a great city, proud and prosperous, beloved of homing hearts, and blessed in its purity and peace. "Beloved," I sighed through a gathering mist of consciousness. I felt some hot tears falling on my face. I felt a kiss seal my lips. I felt a breathing in my ear.
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"Oh, my dear, my dear!" she said. "I've only brought you sorrow and pain, but you've brought me love, that love that is a dazzling light, beside which the sunshine is as darkness." "Berna!" I raised myself; I put out my arms to clasp her. They clasped the empty air. Wildly, wildly I looked around. She was gone! "Berna!" Again
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I cried, but there was no reply. I was alone, alone. Then a great weakness came over me.... I never saw her again. THE LAST It is finished. I have written here the story of my life, or of that portion of it which means everything to me, for the rest means nothing. Now that it is done, I too
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have done, so I sit me down and wait. For what am I waiting? A divine miracle perhaps. Somehow I feel I will see her again, somehow, somewhere. Surely God would not reveal to us the shining light of the Great Reality only to plunge us again into outer darkness? Love cannot be in vain. I will not believe it.
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Somehow, somewhere! So in the glow of the great peat fire I sit me down and wait, and the faith grows in me that she will come to me again; that I will feel the soft caress of her hand upon my pillow, that I will hear her voice all tuned to tenderness, that I will see through my tear-blinded
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eyes her sweet compassionate face. Somehow, somewhere! With the aid of my crutch I unlatch one of the long windows and step out onto the terrace. I peer through the darkness and once more I have a sense of that land of imperious vastitudes so unfathomably lonely. With an unspeakable longing in my heart, I try to pierce the shadows
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that surround me. From the cavernous dark the snowflakes sting my face, but the great night seems good to me, and I sink into a garden seat. Oh, I am tired, tired.... I am waiting, waiting. I close my eyes and wait. I know she will come. The snow is covering me. White as a statue, I sit and wait.
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* * * * * Ah, Berna, my dear, my dear! I knew you would return; I knew, I knew. Come to me, little one. I'm tired, so tired. Put your arms around me, girl; kiss me, kiss me. I'm weak and ill, but now you've come I'll soon be well again. You won't leave me any more; will you,
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honey? Oh, it's good to have you once again! It seems like a dream. Kiss me once more, sweetheart. It's all so cold and dark. Put your arms around me.... Oh, Berna, Berna, light of my life, I knew all would come right at last--beyond the mists, beyond the dreaming; at last, dear love, at last!...
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E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See -h.htm or -h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs//////-h/-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs//////-h.zip) TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY by GRACE MILLER WHITE Illustrations by Howard Chandler Christy New York Grosset & Dunlap Publishers Made in the
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United States of America Copyright, , by W. J. WATT & COMPANY WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY FATHER TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY 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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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 been goin' on why ye ain't made no offer to find the fellow." "Ain't had no time," said the desperate cleaner of fish; "had to get bread and beans, to say
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nothin' of bacon." "But why didn't ye send the brat to the workhouse?" asked Jake. "Satisfied" Longman, as he was called, shook his head. "I was satisfied to let it stay," was all he answered. "My old mammy says," offered Ben Letts, "as how yer son Ezy asked Tessibel Skinner to marry him and as how she slicked him in
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the face with a dirty dishrag." He slowly closed the scarlet lids over his crossed eyes, suspending the pickerel in his hand the while. "Tess ain't had no mother," remonstrated Longman, after a long silence, pausing a moment in his bloody work and allowing his eyes to rest upon the magnificent buildings of the University, rearing above the town, "and
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Myry says that them what has ought to be satisfied." Just then a shadow fell upon the shore of the lake near the fishermen. "There air Tess now," muttered Letts and his two companions eyed a figure clad in rags, with flying copper-colored hair and bare dirty feet, which dropped down beside Longman without asking whether or no. "Cleanin' fish?"
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she queried. "Can't ye see?" growled Ben. "'Course I can," she answered; "just wondered if ye knowed yerselves." "Where be yer dad?" queried Longman, smiling as he caught up two long fish, depositing one beside him where it flopped helplessly about upon the hot sand. "Gone to Ithacy," replied Tessibel, and without change of expression or color caught the floundering
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fish in her dirty fingers. "I air a hittin' the little devil on the head with a stone," said she, and with a pointed rock she expertly tapped the fish three times behind the beady eyes and threw him down again motionless. "Suppose seein' the fish wrigglin' gives Tessibel mollygrubs in her belly," grinned Jake Brewer, but Ben Letts broke
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in. "How be yer toad to-day, Tessibel?" This he said with a malevolent smile, as he took from his pocket a huge hunk of tobacco and munched a generous mouthful therefrom. "Pretty well," answered Tess pertly, and measuring the blue water with her eye, she sent a flat stone skipping across it. Then with darkening face she wheeled about upon
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the heavy squatter. "But air it any of yer business how my toad air, Ben Letts?" "Naw," laughed Ben, nudging Jake in the ribs with his bare elbow, "only I thought as how he might be dead." Then he whispered to Brewer, "Wait till I get at him." "Dead--dead, who said as how he air dead? Ye in't been a
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rubberin' in his hole, have ye, Ben Letts?" Ben only laughed in reply. "Ye have, Ben Letts, ye have, damn ye," screamed the girl now glowering above the fishermen with eyes changing to the deep copper of her hair. "Take that, and that, and that." She had snatched the long fish from his fingers, and with swift swirls slapped it
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thrice into the fisherman's face. Turning she flashed away, her long shadows giving out the smaller ones of the tatters that hung about her. "I'll be goldarned," gasped Letts, "and I'll be goldarned twice if I don't get even with her some of these here days. The devil's built his nest in her alright, and if hell fire don't get
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her, it'll be 'cause she air burned up by her own cussed wickedness." He rubbed his face frantically with the soiled sleeve of his shirt, spitting out the scales and blood that hat lodged between his dark-colored teeth. "Ye're always a tormentin' her, Ben," said Longman; "now if ye was only satisfied to let her alone, I air a thinkin'
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that she wouldn't bother ye. Tess air a good girl, for Myry says as how she can hush the brat when he air a howlin' like a nigger." "She'll cast a spell over him, that's what she will," muttered Ben Letts. "Her ma could take off warts afore she was knee high to a grasshopper, and so can Tess. Once
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she whispered ten off from Minister Graves' hand under his very eyes when he was a laughin' at the idee." "Wish they'd lit on his nose," broke out Jake Brewer, darkly, "he wouldn't be makin' it so hard for us down here. He gets his bread on Sunday if any man does. But they do say as how, when he
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sees Tess a comin' along, he scoots like a jack-rabbit." "Sposin' the Dominie don't laugh now, sposin' he don't," put in Longman with a chuckle, "he air lost the ten warts, ain't he? Tess ain't the worst in this here county." "She can keep the bread-risin' from comin' up," objected Brewer; "she did it with us one day last winter.
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She scooted by our hut and down dropped the yeast. Wouldn't as much as let her step her foot in my kitchen bakin' day. Air we goin' out again to-night, fellers?" "Yep," answered Ben Letts. "Sposin' Orn'll go, too. He air in town but he'll get back, Orn will. There ain't no man on the shores of this here lake
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that can pull a net with a steady hand like Orn Skinner. Pity he has such a gal." Letts gave another wipe at the scales which still clung to his neck and his eyes glittered evilly as he looked in the direction the girl had taken. He turned when Longman touched his arm. For years it had been the custom
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of the fishermen to allow the subject of netting to remain undiscussed. They plied their trade, spent a term in prison if detected, and returned to again take up their occupation of catching and selling fish. Ben Letts knew he was venturing upon dangerous ground. "Broad daylight," he growled, catching the expression upon his companion's face, "and there ain't no
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one in sight that'll tell." "Better be satisfied to keep yer mouth shut, Ben Letts," cautioned Longman, "nettin' air bad for the man what gets caught." "Got any bait out there?" he finished, pointing lakeward to a bobbing box anchored a distance from the shore. "Not a damn bit," replied Jake Brewer, "don't need it now. Keep the bait cars
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a floatin' to blind the eyes of some guy that might be a rubberin'. They don't know a minnie from a whale, those city coves don't." "Ain't that Orn's boat comin' under the shadders of the trees?" queried Longman, rising to his feet and wiping his long jack-knife on his blue-jeans breeches. "Yep, it air him," he added, getting a
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closer look at the approaching flat-bottomed boat in which sat a big round-shouldered individual working vigorously away at the oars. Orn Skinner was called the "Giant Fisherman," because even in his bare feet he was seven inches above every other man in the settlement. Two enormous humps stood side by side on his shoulders, and a grizzled head lifted and
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sank with each sweep of the oars. Glancing around to direct his course, Skinner saw the men waiting for him in front of Jake Brewer's hut. With a sharp turn he swung the boat shoreward and a few vigorous strokes sent it grating upon the sand. Jumping out he dragged the boat to a safe mooring, from where the waves
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could not beat it back into the lake. In the beginning, it is said, God made the heavens and the earth. He made the seas and all that in them is, with the myriads of fish, the toads, the snakes and afterward man. Then to grace His handiwork, He created the heart of a woman--the loving, suffering, unteachable heart of
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Eve. The first tinge of thinking sorrow comes into a woman's heart at the age of fifteen, and this was the beginning of Tessibel's sorrow, as she lifted her feet over the hot sands and sped onward. Tessibel was what most people would call a careless, worthless jade. She shamefully neglected her father, but covered the fact to him by
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the wild, willful worship which she bestowed upon him. If he uttered a word of disapprobation she would fling herself, like a cat, upon his crooked shoulders and bend back his head until the red of her lips met his--- the pathos in her red-brown eyes quieting his qualms as to the dirt he had to go through to get
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into bed. In the mornings, either in summer or winter, he was obliged to tumble the ragged girl from the roped cot he had made for her (when at last she had reached an age too old to sleep with him), and force her, grumbling the while, to eat the bacon and fish he had prepared. But he seemed happy
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through it all, for the brown-eyed girl brought back to his mind the slip of a fishermaid who had died when Tessibel was born. True, there was more copper in the girl's hair and eyes than there had been in the mother's--more of the bright burnishing like that of a polished old-fashioned kettle hanging over the spigot in a tidy
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housewife's kitchen. But Tessibel's one room was never tidy nor had she a kettle. In one iron frying pan she cooked the fish and bacon, while a small tin pail held the water for the tea. These were the only cooking utensils of the hut. Tess could climb to the top of the highest pine tree in the forest yonder;
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she could squirm through the underbrush with the agility of a rabbit. She loved every crawling, hateful thing, such as all honest people despised, and she once fought with the son of an uphill farmer for robbing a bird's nest, making him give up the eggs and restoring them herself to the top of a pine tree in the fodder
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lot of Minister Graves. According to the ideas of all who knew her, save her father and Myra Longman, Tessibel was full of eccentric traits; for who but Tess would feel the "mollygrubs," as Ben Letts had said, at the wriggling of the agonized perch and pickerel, as they flopped painfully upon the sands; or who but Tess would mind
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the squeaking of the mother-bird calling for her own. It was something of this "mollygrub" feeling that hastened her dirt-caked feet, as she rounded the mud cellar near her father's hut, and sped back of the weeping willow tree hanging in green fringes over the cabin. She dropped quickly upon her knees before a large log, which in some former
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time the flood-waters had dashed to its place. Tessibel ran her red, bare arm into the hole in the end of the log. Then she sat up and gazed around. "He air gone," she said aloud, "he air gone. Ben Letts has took him, damn his dirty hide. He ain't no more good than--" Something caused her to close her
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lips. A large high-warted toad sprang into her dirty lap and slipped to the ground through the rent in her skirt. Tenderly she took the reptile in her fingers, for she loved this warted monster who seemed by the turn of his head to reciprocate in some way the devotion the girl showered upon him. She lifted him close to
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her face, and intently searched his poppy eyes. "I said, damn his hide, Frederick," she said in a low tone, "'cause I thought he took ye. And ye ain't done nothin' to him, have ye? Ye was just out huntin' flies, wasn't ye, Frederick? Don't never stay long or ye'll git hit with a spear. Ezry Longman don't like ye
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nuther, 'cause I kisses ye, and 'cause, on my birthday, I hit his mug with a dishrag when he was tryin' to kiss me fifteen times, and was askin' me to marry him. I'd rather kiss--" Her sentence remained unfinished. She looked up to see a tall boy leaning upon a rake, a boy with pale gray eyes, and an
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evil face. His short hair looked as if it had passed through the fingers of a prison barber. His blue-jean breeches were held up by a rope fastened in the button holes with small iron nails, and the blue blouse which had been clean that morning was now drenched with perspiration. "Ain't ye got nothin' better to do than to
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be kissin' a toad," he expostulated, without waiting for the girl to greet him, although she had risen to her feet, holding fast to her reptile treasure. "Ain't nothin' to you, air it, what I does as long as Daddy don't care?" she retorted, and sullenly counted one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight long weeping willow leaves which
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had died that day and had fallen to the ground. She gathered each leaf between her great bare toe and its next-door neighbor, deftly throwing them aside as she counted. "I care," stolidly said the boy coming nearer, "and ye air a goin' to throw that toad away, does ye see? Ma says as how ye could be made into
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a woman if ye hadn't got batty with birds and things. She says as how when ye sing to the brat that yer voice sounds like an angel's, and that's why the kid sleeps. He air a cryin' all the time to have ye sing to him." Tess hadn't expected this. She did love the tiny unwelcome child of Myra
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