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. "Why! he air been dead a long time, ain't he?" "Yes; six months." "And ye air a-lovin' him yet?" "Yes." "But he air dead," philosophized Tess. "He ain't with no other girl." Teola shivered violently. "Oh, I know that; I know that. But I--I need him. I want him so!" "But he air dead," said Tess again steadily. For many minutes neither spoke. For Teola's new burst of agony settled a solemnity upon Tess which she could not throw off. Forgetting her squatter position, she slipped her hand between the white fingers of the weeper. Teola did not care if the girl's finger-nails were filled with black soot, did not care if the squatter were covered with a dirty, ragged dress, or if her bare feet were calloused from the rocks. Tess was a human being who sympathized with her, and sympathy was as necessary to Teola's soul at that moment as breath was to her body. In the spasmodic whitening of the other girl's face Tess realized a desperate heart agony. [Illustration: "THEN YE AIR COMIN' HOME WITH ME TO THE SHANTY."] "Ye air sick," she said at last, an enlightened expression widening her lids. "A woman's kind of sick, ain't it? Eh?" "Yes," answered Teola, flushing deeply; "yes." "Then ye air a-comin' home with me to the shanty." Tess muttered this in a sly voice, almost in a whisper.