Teola had seen Tess pass, and had caught a glimpse of the thin child upon her hands. The pursed baby lips, from which hung the useless sugar rag, made her lower her head to the prayer cushion, shuddering violently. Frederick had also seen the squatter--everyone in the church had seen her, and the silence grew wider and wider, until even breathing was hushed to catch her words.
Her low, sweet voice began to speak; it thrilled through the congregation like the song of angels.
"I has brought ye a dyin' brat, Dominie Graves," began Tess with shaking voice, "who has got to be sprinkled, or he can't go to Heaven."
The vast silence of the edifice echoed her petition.
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.
"There air lots of water left. Be there other babies wantin' it worse than this one?"
She turned half-way round, and faced the wall of white faces, sending the question out in high-pitched tones.
Then Graves spoke with austerity and strength, riding down his anger with a mighty effort.
"You will please take the child from the church. You have your own squatter mission for such as that."