"Tess, will you come to our home, and tell Father and Mother about—Teola?"
The name slipped into a whisper from his lips, and, leaning against the hut door, he burst into boyish, bitter tears.
"Forgive me, please," he murmured; "but it was so awful! And what she must have suffered!... And I didn't know—we none of us knew." He lifted his face, swept them with a heartrending glance, and finished. "She died in the church to-day with the baby."
"She air happy to be with the man what she loves, ain't she?" said Tess, softly.
Frederick grasped her hands, her brilliant smile easing the pain that like a knife stabbed his heart.
"You think she was happy to die, Tess?... Tell me all she said.... Did she know she was going away?"
For an instant the rapid rush of questions daunted Tessibel. But she sorted them out, commencing from the first one to answer them.
"Yep, she air happy," she said positively; "awful happy. She wanted to go to her man in the sky.... He were a-waitin' for her every day, and she knowed she were a-goin' to die, 'cause—'cause she prayed every night that God'd take her and the brat."
"Prayed? She prayed to die, when we all loved her so?" stammered Frederick.