Tess of the Storm Country. Grace Miller White
as one by one she slowly counted them.
Ma Moll was crooning over the kettle. She was a woman older than any one even dared guess. With a cackling laugh she always answered questions as to her age with the assertion that she was "nigh on to two hundred and a deal more than that," and no one could contradict her, for she was old when Orn Skinner was a small boy.
Tess, taking her eyes from the hanging bats, allowed them to rest upon the hag. The small dwarfed figure was not so tall as her own and the rounded shoulders, drawn down by great age, held a head grizzled and shriveled. A few tufts of gray hair hung over the ragged wrapper-like garment which covered the thin body. Great bunches stood out on the bare feet, while the long fingers stirring the liquid in the pot, were knuckled high on each hand.
"Air it the headless man what I spoke of," Moll asked again peering into the pot, "no—it ain't that … it air somethin' worse than that."
"Worse than that," echoed Tess coming forward, and sinking down upon her knees beside the hag.
"It air worse than the squaw and her burnt brat … Aye, worse—"
"Worse—than—what?" faltered Tess, with a sob in her throat.
"It air the shadder of a rope—"
Here the hag moved closer to the bubbling kettle while the red-brown head pushed nearer and nearer.
"And there air a loop in the end," went on Mother Moll.
Tessibel caught her breath. It was the black place—the rope of the Canadian Indian. The awfulness—the loneliness of her despair made her whimper brokenly behind a tattered sleeve. The hag was muttering her incantations and did not heed the girl.
"The rope air a long 'un and a stout 'un," Ma Moll's voice had raised to a shrill cry as she described the instrument of death. Tessibel's head was now close to the hag's. Her wild terror-stricken eyes following the stick as it stirred the contents of the pot.
"Air the loop around a neck, and air there humps under the head what's a hangin'?"
She quivered as she spoke. The thin body of the hag crept nearer to the child—the gray straggling locks mingling with the copper curls, and the youthful shoulders of the fishermaid contrasting strongly with those of the bent old woman.
The hag was searching for the humps—her wild old eyes glaring into the seething mess. A trembling bat loosened its hold upon the rafters above and blinded by the light of the candle, thrashed its zig-zag course about the shanty, banging first the window, then the door, and causing both watchers to lift their heads. They saw him as he fell fluttering to the floor, lifting his body pantingly up and down.
Again they gazed into the pot, and as one thin hand held the whirling stick the hag's bony finger pointed mysteriously to the shadow marking the future.
"Be there humps," persisted Tess, "big round humps standin' out as how the hills stand by the lake?"
The hag replied in a hoarse whisper:
"There be no humps, but there air a dead man."
So thoroughly did Tess believe in the witch's words that she sank back with a cry, upon her wet red feet.
"It ain't daddy," she breathed slowly, hardly daring to utter the name.
"There be no humps," repeated Ma Moll. "There air a storm and a dead man, but his face ain't a showin'. There air another dead one on the shore. He ain't the same kind of one, he air—"
"A gamekeeper," filled in Tess.
The witch wobbled her head in assent, as Tessibel leaned over to follow the long finger defining the shadow.
"There air a shanty," Mother Moll went on, "a child alone, and dead things layin' about and there air a—a—"
The two heads were now bent directly over the pot. Tess caught her breath in a sob. Was Daddy Skinner coming back to the shanty? The dragon blood sputtered, boiling higher and higher, over the heat of the fire, as the witch dug it upward from the bottom of the kettle.
"A prison cell and a man," ended Moll.
"Be there humps?" gasped Tess.
An acquiescent nod came from the gray-grizzled head. Tessibel wound her fingers about the arm-bone of the hag.
"Air there a cross with a Christ hangin' on it?"
The witch looked deeper into the dark mixture, her eyes squinting to narrow slits, and Tess continued:
"A hangin' Christ that air hurt, and be there thorns a-diggin' in Him?"
Deeper and deeper into the sizzling pot stared the faded blue eyes of the hag, the dark wide-spread ones of the girl following every movement of Ma Moll's hand.
"Aye, there air a cross for ye, brat, to carry on yer back—"
"Air there no Christ a bearin' one for Daddy?"
Suddenly the door burst open, and the raging wind flickered out the candle. It had been so sudden that Tess screamed, and the witch muttered a curse. The rain tore its way through the small dirty room; the bats loosened their hold upon the wooden rafters and circled the darkness, first into the open, then into the room—against and away from Tessibel's face, until the girl broke into wild weeping.
Ma Moll had failed to find the cross. The wind forcing the door bespoke evil for Daddy. Without the student's Christ how could she save him?
"Go home, brat," ordered the hag. "Go home, there air a cross with a Christ hangin' to it, and there were a dead man without humps."
Out into the rain the sound of the hag's words ringing in her ears, the whizzing bats for the first time filling her with a strange mysterious fear, Tessibel went. She turned into the dark forest of which she was not afraid, and crossing the gorges again, sought the upper hill which led to the tracks.
CHAPTER VIII
Elias Graves was pastor of one of the largest churches in Ithaca. His family consisted of his wife, his son Frederick, and his daughter Teola, a girl of sixteen, and little Babe, the spoiled pet of the family. Besides a beautiful town rectory, he owned the lake farm and held the title to the small piece of property upon which Orn Skinner squatted. That the hut and its filth injured his own magnificent cottage no one denied.
It was true he only spent ten or twelve weeks of the summer in the lake house, but every man desired his own. For several years there had been a continual fight between the pastor and the fisherman—Orn Skinner answering the minister with the squatter law of the state which gave him the use of the few feet of ground upon which his shanty stood.
Still the Dominie insisted that some day he would rid his summer home of the pest and the time had come.
After leaving Tessibel he walked up the long lane leaning on the arm of his son, sputtering against his enemies.
"The very idea of that malicious brat jumping upon me as she did. She ought to have a sound whipping."
Frederick shivered slightly. His heart was full of sympathy for the primitive girl who had so devotedly loved her toad.
"We would be rid of the whole family if we could get that girl away," went on his father, "then I could file a request to take what belongs to me. Hall said only to-night that he would like to see all the squatters gone. We've decided to make a move."
Frederick tried to make a small complaint, but the minister commanded him to silence.
"Get rid of them I will, do you hear?" he shouted, "they have no moral right there whatever the law says. Get rid of them, I will."
When the Dominie reiterated strongly his whole family remained silent, and this time Frederick dared