"This durn stove ain't got no fire in it," she said, laying Baby Dan in the box. "I's a-goin' for a stick of wood!"
As Tessibel walked past him, Ben did not stop her—squatters never saved steps for their women. The girl flung open the door, but hesitated on the threshold. During the instant of her indecision, a silent panorama of night passed before her. Heavy rain clouds dipped almost to the dark water, obscuring the city and the University hill beyond. A great steamer attached to a number of canal boats lay as a thin black line in the center of the lake. An owl left the branches of the hut tree and circled into the safety of the shore willows, and a stealthy barn cat, with thread-like legs, crept from the water's edge toward the lane with a trailing dead fish in his jaws. He turned glistening green eyes upon Tess, and leapt away with his treasure.
Oh! to be out once more in the darkness with the child—out among God's creatures, her creatures, there she would be safe—safe from Myra's terror.
Glancing back at little Dan, she saw his large gray eyes fixed gravely upon the candlelight. To leave him there was like sending him into the jaws of death. To take him was impossible. She turned back, closed the door with a gasp, and faced Ben Letts.
He was at her side in a moment.
"I air got ye now," sounded in her ear like the roar of the sea. She felt the man crush her in his arms, felt the thick lips upon her face.
"Ye think ye be such a smart kid that ye needn't never mind what a man says to ye. I knows that brat don't belong to yerself. I ain't seed ye all summer for nothin'. Tell me, whose air he?"
Tess wrenched herself free, and sent forth scream after scream. A horny hand left a red mark across the fair face. It was the right of the fisherman to beat the woman he loved.... Tessibel Skinner was feeling for the first time the aggressiveness of the male.
"Ben, Ben, I tells ye the truth if ye wait a minute."
Ben relaxed his hold a little, and the girl continued: