"I can just about tell," answered Graves. "Rebecca says that for many mornings she has had no milk for her coffee. And I left the kitchen door unlocked to-night purposely to catch the thief. Let me see.... I think we've been robbed for ten days? That means ten good stripes for you, Tessibel Skinner.... Put down that milk!" "I won't do it," Tessibel whitened. She had not believed the minister when he had threatened to whip her. He was trying to scare her. He would probably take away the milk, and send her home again. But he had stepped to the wall, and taken a riding-whip from a nail. Tess had seen that whip before, once--the time she had twiggled her fingers. Graves had shaken it at her from his saddle-horse. Then she had not been afraid.... The clergyman came toward her. "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."