So thoroughly did Tess believe in the witch's words that she sank back with a cry, upon her wet red feet. "It ain't daddy," she breathed slowly, hardly daring to utter the name. "There be no humps," repeated Ma Moll. "There air a storm and a dead man, but his face ain't a showin'. There air another dead one on the shore. He ain't the same kind of one, he air--" "A gamekeeper," filled in Tess. The witch wobbled her head in assent, as Tessibel leaned over to follow the long finger defining the shadow. "There air a shanty," Mother Moll went on, "a child alone, and dead things layin' about and there air a--a--" The two heads were now bent directly over the pot. Tess caught her breath in a sob. Was Daddy Skinner coming back to the shanty? The dragon blood sputtered, boiling higher and higher, over the heat of the fire, as the witch dug it upward from the bottom of the kettle. "A prison cell and a man," ended Moll. "Be there humps?" gasped Tess. An acquiescent nod came from the gray-grizzled head. Tessibel wound her fingers about the arm-bone of the hag. "Air there a cross with a Christ hangin' on it?" The witch looked deeper into the dark mixture, her eyes squinting to narrow slits, and Tess continued: "A hangin' Christ that air hurt, and be there thorns a-diggin' in Him?" Deeper and deeper into the sizzling pot stared the faded blue eyes of the hag, the dark wide-spread ones of the girl following every movement of Ma Moll's hand. "Aye, there air a cross for ye, brat, to carry on yer back--" "Air there no Christ a bearin' one for Daddy?" Suddenly the door burst open, and the raging wind flickered out the candle. It had been so sudden that Tess screamed, and the witch muttered a curse. The rain tore its way through the small dirty room; the bats loosened their hold upon the wooden rafters and circled the darkness, first into the open, then into the room--against and away from Tessibel's face, until the girl broke into wild weeping. Ma Moll had failed to find the cross. The wind forcing the door bespoke evil for Daddy. Without the student's Christ how could she save him? "Go home, brat," ordered the hag. "Go home, there air a cross with a Christ hangin' to it, and there were a dead man without humps." Out into the rain the sound of the hag's words ringing in her ears, the whizzing bats for the first time filling her with a strange mysterious fear, Tessibel went. She turned into the dark forest of which she was not afraid, and crossing the gorges again, sought the upper hill which led to the tracks. CHAPTER VIII