| ILLUSTRATIONS | ||
| “For God’s sake give me suthin’ to eat” (Frontispiece) | [23] | |
| All the goblin forms and hideous shapes of Old Tomah’s fancy were rushing and leaping about | [21] | |
| Nearer and nearer that unconscious girl it crept! | [123] | |
| He grasped and struck at this enemy in a blind instinct of self-preservation | [195] | |
| “Won’t you please give me a lift an’ a chance to earn my vittles for a day or two?” | [260] | |
| “Thank God, little gal, I’ve found what belongs to ye” | [272] | |
| “Quit takin’ on so, girlie,” he said | [325] | |
| “I did mean to hate you, but I–I can’t” | [416] | |
PART I
CHIP MCGUIRE
CHAPTER I
Chip was very tired. All that long June day, since Tim’s harsh, “Come, out wid ye,” had roused her to daily toil, until now, wearied and disconsolate, she had crept, barefoot, up the back stairs to her room, not one moment’s rest or one kindly word had been hers.
Below, in the one living room of Tim’s Place, the men were grouped playing cards, and the medley of their oaths, their laughter, the thump of knuckles on the bare table, and the pungent odor of pipes, reached her through the floor cracks. Outside the fireflies twinkled above the slow-running river and along the stump-dotted hillside. Close by, a few pigs dozed contentedly in their rudely constructed sty.
A servant to those scarce fit for servants, a menial at the beck and call of all Tim’s Place, and laboring with the men in the fields, Chip, a girl of almost sixteen, felt her soul revolt at the filth, the brutality, the coarse existence of those whose slave she was.
And what a group they were!
First, Tim Connor, the owner and master of this oasis in the wilderness, sixty miles from the nearest settlement; his brother Mike, as coarse; their wives and a half a dozen children who played with the pigs, squealed as often for food, and were left to grow up the same way; and Pierre Lubec, the hired man, completed the score.