A pale winter moon nestled among the snow clouds in the storm country. The shacks of the squatter settlement were dark and silent, save for a slender little light glimmering from the side of the curtains of the Skinner shanty. Inside, all was quiet. The squatter girl had been in the valley of shadows, and had struggled back from its depths, bringing with her that miracle of miracles, a son, a little son not much bigger than the hand of a man; and, now, pillowed on her arm, very near her heart, lay a small head, a baby's head, covered with soft, damp curls.
Mother Moll had come and gone. When the old, old woman had looked down upon the girl, she'd smiled that senile smile of age that split her lips like a knife cut.
"Ha! So it air another brat comin' to the shanty," she shrilled. "Holy Mary! It air the way of the world, the way of woman."
And now she'd gone, leaving the boy baby under the coverlet with Tessibel.
A weary apathy had settled over the young mother. Strange dreams filled the small room with haunting, tangible things which she could reach out and touch if she dared. The rafters, too, were peopled with faces partly hidden in the dry nets. But she seemed to be staring at something out and beyond--as Daddy Skinner, too, had stared that never-to-be-forgotten night.
The past months, where the grey days and sun days had all been the same, moved vaguely in silent procession before her. She had lived through them like a pale ghost indifferent alike to sunshine or shadow, and this night she had drained to the last drop the bitter cup Frederick Graves had given her to drink. Frederick, her husband, her beloved! She thought of him indifferently. Even his babe at her breast seemed unimportant. She considered them without emotion. But the ghostly faces, hovering among the nets, interested her.
Then, distinctly from among them advanced a figure, a dear, familiar figure. Daddy Skinner ... the same old adorable daddy--his shaggy, thready beard hanging over his chest. For one single instant he bent over her, lovingly laid his hand upon the bronze curls and smiled in the way he had of doing before he had gone away with mummy. Tess flung up her hands.
"Daddy! Daddy Skinner!" she cried.
The movement startled the babe from his sleep. The dwarf, roused by the cries scrambled to the open hole.
"Tessibel--Tess," he called brokenly.
The girl lifted heavy lids.
"Daddy was here, Andy," she wailed in misery. "My own Daddy Skinner. I want to go with him.... I can't live any longer without him."