The nervous whining in Teola's voice brought Tess over to her. The squatter forced the soiled blanket over the young shoulders.
"If ye sleeps to-night, I tells ye in the mornin' about the brat.... Sleep, now."
For more than an hour Tessibel sat with Teola Graves' baby clasped tightly in her arms, moving back and forth silently in the wooden rocker. A broken board squeaked now and then under the girl's weight, but she slipped the chair into other positions, and rocked on.
She marveled at the child born but that afternoon. The eyes were large and grey. Locks of damp hair fell over a wrinkled, broad brow, giving the infant the expression of an old, old man. In the light Tess could mark every feature. She had never seen a babe so small, and so sickly-looking. She ran her fingers over the right cheek, tenderly, rubbing down a livid mark that extended from the dark hair to the upper part of the breast. It was the birth-mark of fire, red and gleaming crimson as the brightest blood, and it had been because of this mark that Tess had refused the young mother's request to see her child. Perhaps in the morning it would be gone. If not, Teola would be stronger and better able to bear the shock. After wrapping the infant closely in a warm cloth, Tess took it in her arms, and laid herself down beside Teola; and the trio slept as all youth sleeps, until the morning sun had been shining long in the window.
"Be ye better now?" asked Tess, trying to stand Teola on her feet.
"I am dreadfully ill yet," was the whispered answer. "But I want to see my baby.... And what shall I do with him? Oh, what shall I do?"
"He air a-sleepin' now," replied the squatter. "And he stays here with me, ye hear? Ye can't take him to yer pa's house, and the hut air good enough for him to live in, if it was good enough for him to be borned in."
"You mean, Tessibel, that you will care for my baby, until I can arrange something for him?—So that my father and mother may not know—"
"Er the student," broke in Tess.