Graves gasped for breath, but did not relax his hold upon the pail. With a motion as quick as lightning flashes, Tess lowered her head, and set her teeth into the Dominie's fat white hand. A cry of pain escaped him, and he opened his fingers. "I said as how I got to have the milk--and--and I air got it! Open that door!" Tess shrieked out the last words, her eyes, full of hatred, bent upon Graves. Frederick strode forward, turned the key in the lock, and Tess sprang out. * * * * * Tessibel ran swiftly through the orchard, out into the lane, her rage dying out in her fear for the babe. She had never left him so long before. Her flesh still tingled from the Dominie's blows, but her admission before Frederick that she was compelled to steal hurt her worse than the blue welts rising upon her shoulders. She regretted, too, that she had bitten the clergyman's hand, but that had been done for the baby--little Dan had to live. She came to an alert standstill in front of the cabin. She saw the light from a candle flickering out through the window. Tess was sure she had left the hut dark--she had extinguished the light just before going out for the milk. Who was in the hut? Or had she made a mistake, and left the candle there? For the sake of the child she had to enter. She set down the pail, lifted her skirt, wiped away the traces of tears. Then, flinging wide the door, she came upon Ben Letts. CHAPTER XXXV Ben was standing beside the bed, with the open grape-basket in his hand, looking down intently upon the child. His one eye flashed past Tess in its blindness, while the watery one with the red veins running through it distorted itself into a squint, and brought its evil gaze upon her. The fat chin, covered with a stubby growth of hair, shook with malicious pleasure, the dark teeth set grimly through the brown, tobacco-stained lips. "It air a brat!" he said at last, Tess standing paralyzed. "Air its Pappy the--" He did not finish. Tess snatched the basket from his hand, and covered the whining babe. "Ye be allers snoopin' yer nose in some one's else's business," she said darkly, her fear of him growing with each minute. "Ye can't keep from my hut any day, and ye ain't no right here nuther." "I telled ye and the student that the time'd come when I'd get even with ye both--and it air here!... It air here, I say!" "The student ain't nothin' to do with this here brat," retorted Tess. "Ye thinks as how ye knows a heap.... Well, ye don't.... And it air time for ye to be a-goin' now, Ben Letts!" "I air a-goin' to stay," said he, "Daddy's" stool creaking under his weight.