"My brother! Tess, my brother Frederick! He must not know. It would kill him—and me. You, Tess,—you swear that you won't tell him?"
"I ain't a-tellin' him nothin'. I swears it, ye hear? I swears I won't tell the student nothin' about the little kid."
"Of course you won't," answered Teola weakly. "I trust you, Tessibel."
There was a deep questioning in the squatter girl's eyes as they rested upon the quiet bundle on the foot of the bed. How could a mother leave her child in the care of a stranger?—leave him in a squatter's hut, where the rats scurried hungrily about the floor, and the bats fluttered among the ceiling rafters!
"Don't look like that, Tessibel!" Teola burst in. "You understand, don't you, that I can't tell them?—that I can't take him home? My brother loves me better than any other person in the world, and I love him as much as he does me."
The blood suffused the drawn face to the hair line.
"And I want to see my baby before I go," she pleaded.
Tess shook her shoulders, and hesitated awkwardly.
"He air to sleep.... And ye ain't no business a-wakin' him up, nuther."
Suddenly a dread flashed into Teola's mind.