"Ye hit me with that whip," growled Tess, "and--and--I'll kill ye!"
"Oh! you will, eh?... Well, then, there it is!"
A stinging blow fell across her shoulders, and another and another. The slender body writhed silently, turned and twisted to escape the descending whip. Drops of milk spattered upon the floor. Never before had Tess known such physical pain. The minister was counting the blows deliberately as they fell. At the eighth stroke, the girl opened her lips and uttered a long, piercing cry--an intense, vibrating cry. The last blow fell upon Tessibel's shivering back,--and Frederick appeared in the doorway. His father leaning against the wall breathlessly, the whip hanging limply from his hand; Tessibel Skinner, barefooted and weeping, with a pail of milk clasped in her fingers--was what the boy saw. He had no chance to speak before Teola, too, with streaming hair, her nightrobe clutched convulsively in one hand, opened the hall door.
The scene whirled before her like a frightful nightmare.
The fisher-girl turned and faced her.
"Yer Pappy air a-beatin' me ... I hev a-been stealin' milk."
Her words fell between little, broken gasps. They touched Frederick as he never had been touched before. He stepped forward hastily to speak.
"I air a-needin' the milk," she explained, bowing her head before him. "I has to have it!"
The infant rushed into Frederick's mind ... the squalid cabin, that twisting thing, with thin, discolored veins. It had been for him that Tess had stolen. Teola staggered toward her father, a cough racking the emaciated frame. Minister Graves threw his arms about her.
"Go back! Go back quickly, child! You should not have ventured out of bed. I will settle with the squatter."
"You whipped her!" breathed Teola.
"Yes, and will again, if I catch her stealing from my kitchen. Now, miss, you can go home. Put down that milk; and, if I find you here in the future, I shall put you behind the bars, with your father."
Frederick counted the beats of his heart through the blank silence. He felt impelled to reach forward to Tessibel,--to say something to relieve the white, tense face. His father was waiting for the squatter to take her departure. But Tess remained with the pail in her hand.
Suddenly she lifted her streaming eyes to the minister's face.
"I has been beaten.... And I air a-feelin' so--bad! Air I to have the milk? I needs it." Tess sobbed again, and continued, "I ain't a-carin' so awful about the lickin' as I does about havin' the milk."