So when night closed the grey eyes of the winter day, and darkness descended on the Skinner shanty, a red-haired squatter girl and a wee dwarf knelt in the glow of the hut lamp and petitioning lips framed in whispers a simple prayer for their protection.
The next day passed, quiet in the shanty and over the shining span of frozen water. Waldstricker had not come. Tess crept into bed sighing with relief. Andy rolled himself in his blankets and slept.
The morning arrived crisply cold, bleakly grey. Tess shivered as she broke the ice for water. Would this day bring Waldstricker? Then, as that harrowing thought flitted through her mind, another exultant, smiling flash took its place. Tessibel's head reared with a proud uplift. No human power could set aside the majestic promise of Heaven that she might stay in the hut. Smilingly, she opened the shanty door and cheerfully answered the dwarf's, "How d'y' do, brat dear?"
But the next few hours were laden with a sense of approaching calamity, that sense which ties the tongue in apprehension. Andy was perched on the ladder while Tess sat just below in the wooden rocker.
Suddenly, from far up the lane, the sound of wheels grating on the snow, could be heard plainly. Both man and girl stared white-faced at each other for perhaps thirty seconds.
"They're comin', but they can't take ye, Brat," muttered Andy. "You'll stay in this shanty the same 's if you was nailed to the floor."
Then, he sought his place under the straw tick, and as nearer and louder came the clatter of the horses hoofs, the more quiet grew the Skinner hut.
Tessibel stood in the middle of the kitchen, her hand pressing down the beatings of her heart. Somebody was approaching! There were footsteps on the dry snow!
Directly the crunching sound ceased, a loud knock fell on the door. Tessibel lifted the bar, and at her faint, "Come in," the door flung back on its hinges and Ebenezer Waldstricker stepped over the threshold. Another man, seemingly by common consent, waited outside. Waldstricker came to a halt at the sight of the squatter girl. Even in her mourning, and ashen pale, she looked glorious. Her burnished, unmanageable hair clung like a golden mantle about her. She had lifted heavy lashes and was looking him straight in the face.