The gaping minister never once took his eyes from her face, and made no move to answer her.
"It air a-dyin', I say," she went on, "and I wants ye to put the water on it."
So deadly in earnest was the girl that a sob broke out in the back of the church. The lithe, barefooted squatter, and the feeble, dying child offered a living picture of pathos, which with its tragedy slowly dawned upon the more sensitive minds, silently telling its tale of human suffering. Minister Graves refused to answer her. He wore the same expression of scorn Tess had seen in the student when she had acknowledged the child as hers.
"Be ye goin' to sprinkle him?" she demanded steadfastly, her voice growing stronger with her emotions. "Be ye?"
"No, I'm not." Graves' voice fell like the sound of a deep-toned bell.
"Be ye goin' to let him go to a place where God can't find him? Be ye?" Tess entreated.
Anger and revolt glinted through the golden-brown of her eyes; she swayed back a little from the font, still holding out the babe.
"He air so little," she pleaded with a choke, "and so awful sick. Mebbe he won't live till mornin'. He can't hurt the others, now they air done with the water, can he?"
She peeped into the marble basin, and lifted her eyes to his face.