For one short moment after the going of Frederick, Tessibel stood,
gapingly, looking out into the darkness. The student had gone and with
him her horror of the minister. The steps died away and dazedly she
closed the door. She remembered the day she had talked the warts off
from Graves' hand--remembered how he had said to her that she was
possessed of the devil. Just what that meant the child didn't know, but
the darkening frown on the minister's face plainly told her that it was
nothing pleasant--since then she had scurried away when the Dominie had
appeared.
This was the first time she had heard the student's voice, for he had
spent most of his summers away from home, and the fisherman's child had
had little chance to see him. He had said that the cross and crown would
save her daddy--had said to pray to the God of whom she knew so little,
and his words had given birth to a great faith within her.
Tessibel's fingers were stained with Frederick's blood and shudderingly
she looked at them in the candle light. Frederick lay where she had
dropped him, his fat white belly sunken and misshapened. The very
stillness of him made the girl round him in a circle, watching him with
an intentness which showed her superstitious fear of the stiffening
dead. Then her great love for him overwhelmed her and she darted like a
bird toward her friend.
"I were afraid of ye, Frederick," she groaned softly, "but I ain't no
more. Ye wouldn't hurt the kid what loves ye so, would ye, if ye air
dead."
She turned the great body over and sobbed. Again the words of the
student softened her grief, and through Frederick Graves, for the sake
of her loved ones, she accepted his mysterious far-away God and His
sacrificed Son.
With loving hands she tumbled the toad into a soiled rag and placed him
in the corner. There was nothing left for her to do save to rescue Daddy
Skinner from the black cap, and she must see him before the rising of
the sun. Mother Moll, the settlement witch, would tell her if Daddy
Skinner were in danger.
She opened the door and stood for a moment before stepping into the
abating storm. Her eyes fell upon a giant pine tree at the edge of the
forest, far beyond her father's hut. It was silhouetted against a light
streak in the southern sky, its long arms extending straight into the
air. The branches of the tree had always made a fantastic figure in
Tessibel's eyes. It took the form of a venerable old man and it had been
one of her vivid imaginings, since she could remember, that some time
the man shaped against the skies would step down in the flesh. Tess had
grown to love him in sunshine and in rain--to watch him in silent,
mystified longing as he bent toward her day after day. In the nodding
head and swaying arms, Tessibel suddenly established Frederick's deity.
As a man from the east worships his sun god through a wooden image, so
Tessibel directed a prayer to this moving figure in the pine tree. Her
pain-drawn lips parted slightly as she stood for a short space of time
watching him.
"If ye be a God," she breathed, "help me see my Daddy."
She said this with bowed head, for grief and the student's admonition
had made a path for reverence through her soul.
Then she closed the cabin door and started toward the shore. Pushing a
flat boat into the lake, which was still turbulent from the storm, she
deftly rounded the long fishing dock, rowing to the bobbing little fish
car which held Daddy's eels. She pulled out the nail, and holding up the
top of the car, ran her hand quickly about inside. Drawing out four huge
eels, she threw them into the bottom of the boat, closed the trap door
and rowed away toward the shore.
Inside the shanty, she placed the fish upon the wooden table and stood
for an instant regarding them. One long eel drew itself into tense half
circles, turning over and over until as he neared the edge of the table
Tessibel caught him. Longer the girl's eyes rested upon this one.
Suddenly she snatched him up--slipping him, wriggling, tail-end first
into the water pail, still holding fast to the pointed head.
"God made ye beautiful," she crooned, "ye can stay there and let me pet
ye. I air got to have somethin' to love."
Turning back to the table, she contemplated the remaining fish for
thirty seconds or so in indecision. Had her own desire ruled, she would
have put them all back into the lake--she would not have killed them;
but to-night--to-night it was for Daddy's sake--he was more to her than
all of nature's creatures. With expert fingers, she sent the life from
the twisting eels, and gathering them into a small bag, Tessibel slung
them over her arm and broke off into the dark forest, the twigs
cracking under her small bare feet as she went. Here and there the curls
of red hair would catch in the branches, and the girl would tear them
loose, leaving a blazed trail of copper threads marking her path.
Up to the ragged rocks she went, through the gorges and brooks until she
came in sight of a small dark hut set deeply in the opposite bank of a
ravine, through which water was flowing. To reach the hut the child
scaled the deep gorge and clambered up the other side.
The shanty was dark and Tessibel stood long looking intently at it. Over
the top, which was covered with tar paper, scraped the branches of a
large tree--the wind was dashing a dead vine mournfully against a broken
window. Although on friendly terms with Mother Moll, Tess had always
stood in awe of her, but the squatter girl had infinite confidence in
the future events foretold by the witch. To-night she must see the
woman--must ask her news of Daddy Skinner from the fortune pot. The dead
fish hanging upon the slender arm were to propitiate the witch's anger
for being dragged from her bed in the night.
Tess stepped shivering to the door and knocked. Receiving no answer, she
sent another pealing sound through the howling wind, for she knew Mother
Moll was there.
Suddenly a voice came from within.
"What in the devil's name do ye want here, at this time of the
darkness?"
"It air Tess, Ma Moll. I wants yer fortune pot."
"Go home and come agin to-morry."
"Won't," Tess sent back defiantly, "air goin' to see ye to-night. I air
goin' to give ye somethin' for yer luck pot."
A scramble, a hurrying sound from within, and the door was dragged open.
Tess stepped into the dark room,--the whizzing of insects overhead
coming dimly to her through the rocking of the shanty. One broad-winged
clammy night bat whirled close to her, but was gone before she could put
up her hand.
"It air a bad night that brought the brat out to me, so it air," growled
the hag, "be it the headless man from Hayte's place what air been
hauntin' ye, or the Indian squaw with her burnt brat?"
She was feeling about for a match as she croaked out her words. Tess did
not answer, but waited until Mother Moll lighted a candle and then
dropped her load upon the floor.
"They air for the luck-pot, I says, Ma Moll," said she, opening the bag,
and displaying the eels, "I comes to know what air in it for me."
"Air they dead eels what you found on the shore," asked the hag
suspiciously, "Maybe them ain't fresh ones."
"I killed them myself but a time ago," responded Tess. "It hurts them to
lug them livin' out of the water, but they fills your pot for many a
mess."
It was a tempting wage for the hag. She blew the dying grate embers into
a blaze over which she hung a small iron pot. The bats had ceased the
infernal flapping of their grotesque wings, and were clinging trembling
to the rafters above. Tess could mark them through the shadows, 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.