And then for a long time nothing was heard in the hut but the winter without, the growls and mutterings of the bulldog in his sleep by the stove, and a sob now and then from the dwarf in the garret. The healing silence of a common love in the presence of a common grief settled upon the strangely matched couple. The little squatter girl, with her shameful secret, and the great lawyer and teacher, kept solemn vigil over the body of Daddy Skinner. * * * * * Daddy Skinner was buried. All the arrangement in connection with the obsequies devolved upon Professor Young. It was he who brought the girl back to the shanty in her simple, clinging, black gown, and after the carriage had delivered them at the hut door, carried her, almost unconscious, into the house and laid her gently upon her bed. Then he closed the door and sat down beside her. It was perhaps an hour later when she lifted her eyes appealingly. "I air awful glad ye stayed with me," she choked. "Tess,"--Young's voice shook.... "Will you let me talk to you a little and not feel I'm intruding upon your sorrows or your secrets?" "Ye wouldn't do anythin' what wasn't right," murmured the girl, under her breath. For some moments he smoothed her burning forehead. Then he lifted her hand and held it in his. "Tessibel," he began. "What?" "First, tell me about the little man in the garret." "There ain't nothin' much to tell," she responded, shaking her head. "When he got out of Auburn, he come here and asked me an' Daddy to take care of 'im, an' we done it, that air all." "I see, dear--and--and you didn't think the law required you to give him up?" Tess moved her head negatively on the pillow. "Sure not, or I'd a done it long ago. The law--what do I care 'bout the law?... It air always puttin' innercent men in jail. That air all the law air fer." "But this man is a murderer," Young tried to explain to her. But Tessibel's gesture, both hands raised, palms outward, expressed her dissent. "They said as how Daddy were a murderer, too," she retorted, "but you found out he weren't, didn't ye?" Young, not able to gainsay this, nodded his head. "How long are you going to keep him here?" he asked presently. Tess sent him a glance pathetically sad and discouraged. "I don't know. The poor little duffer hain't no friends. He ain't no other place to go where old Eb won't git 'im." Young thought of his brother-in-law. He realized immediately with what joy that stern disciplinarian would snatch the little man back into Auburn prison. Doubtless, too, he would visit his rage on the girl who'd shielded him. "Ye helped Daddy git out o' jail," Tess whispered. "Couldn't ye keep Andy out?" Deforrest Young turned his face to the ceiling. A pair of gleaming eyes were staring down upon him from the square hole. "Come down here, you," he said peremptorily.