"Yes, that is my plan," he replied. Andy folded his short legs under him nervously. "We want to stay together, me an' Tess does," he echoed, "an' the baby's awful glad to live with us." Young's lips curled an instant into a smile responsive to the quaint statement. "You remember, Tess," he resumed, "I have a lease of the house where Graves used to live." She answered only by a little forward bend of her head. "My idea is this: I'll open the house, and you, Tess, can come there with the baby. You can keep house in a little way for us all." "Ye said Andy could live with--" "Wait," interrupted the lawyer. "There're two nice rooms on the top floor. You can arrange them for Bishop and he will be as snug as a bug in a rug." A sharp cry of joy broke from the young mother. She sat up straight. She threw back the tangled curls, and leaning forward grasped the hand the speaker thrust out to support her. "Oh, what a good, good man!" she rejoiced. "An' me an' the baby'll love ye forever, me an' the baby will." Tessibel didn't remember she'd made the same promise to another man when she'd begged him in vain to help her. She only knew that Deforrest Young was offering herself and her little child a home, and a safe refuge for Andy Bishop. "It won't be all for you, you understand, child," said Deforrest. "Think! I'll have a home, too, and you can study and work." "An' some day when I'm earnin' money, and Andy's free, we'll pay you all back," the girl interjected. "Well, we won't worry about that now!... As soon as you're well enough, I'll move you all up to the house. Tomorrow I'll see that coal and things're sent down from town!" The reply to his offer was a tighter squeeze from the squatter girl's hand, and a sob from the dwarf. Unable to restrain his joy, the wee man bounded from the floor and fled up the ladder into the garret. For a time the man and girl in the room below sat silent, and all was quiet in the shanty save the voice of Andy Bishop giving forth a thanksgiving such as he had never expressed before. * * * * * Two weeks later a light filtered through the closed shutters of Young's residence on the hill. The old Graves house creaked in the blustery March gale. The hurtling snow-particles rattled upon the blinds and against the clapboards like small shot. Deforrest Young came out of the house and fought his way against the blizzard's buffeting down the hill to the Skinner shack. Stumbling, he fell against the door. "It's I, Tess," he shouted. The girl lifted the bar and admitted him. Dressed in her outer wraps, she stood in the kitchen, anxious and expectant. This minute to Tess was the changing point of her life. Young as she was, she understood what it would mean to the three of them to leave the shanty, to take up their abode in a real home. "Ye said we was to take the baby first," she greeted him, reaching for the shawl on a peg in the door post.