"I'm--I'm ill to-day."
"Ye'll be all right to-morry.... 'T'ain't much, air it?"
"It is very much to me," whispered Teola. "I'm so lonely, and so afraid!"
Tessibel sat silently down beside the other girl, twining one arm about the twisted root of the tree. She was used to sorrow, used to watching the agony of human souls without hope. A bird in the top of the tree above them sent a plaintive note into the hot air. Another answered from the forest, and Tessibel raised her head and saw a scarlet bird take wing and disappear into the branches of the wood trees.
She waited for Teola to speak, but at last, seeing there was no cessation of tears, she leaned over and touched her.
"Be ye lonely for yer ma?" she murmured.
Teola shook her head in the negative.
"Then for yer pa?"
"No!"
Ah! Tess had forgotten. Had she not seen Frederick go away weeks before, in a boat filled with pots and kettles and food for a camping expedition? Had he not smiled at her brightly as she passed him on her way to the fish line? She could remember the tense feeling in her throat, and felt again the hot blood rushing madly into her face. Of course, the girl was weeping for her brother!
"Then air ye blattin' for the student?"
She could scarcely utter the last word, scarcely let Teola hear her voice use that beloved name.
"Yes, I was crying for him," replied Teola. "He is dead, you know."
For one instant Tess thought the world had lost its sun. Her face creased into lines, which tightened rope-like under the tanned skin. How could Frederick have died, and she not have known? She rose unsteadily to her feet, uttering one grunt significant of her suffering.
"Were he drowned?" she asked, in a voice so pained that Teola raised her head and looked at her. She did not understand the meaning of the whitened lips nor of the tense drawing-down of the long red-brown eyes.
"No," she replied slowly, "he was killed in the fire on the hill last winter."
The muscles relaxed in the squatter's face. Her legs refused to bear the slender body, and Tessibel dropped again at Teola's side. The kiss she had cherished burned hot upon her lips. Her student lived. The minister's daughter cried for the other one, for him who had called her Miss Skinner, and who afterward helped her smuggle Frederick into the opera-house.