"Sick the hours through," replied Myra bitterly. "He hes got the pitifullest cry that breaks my heart all the time. But he ain't so sick as his pappy."

"Ben Letts ain't a-goin' to die, air he?"

Tessibel's woful expression caused Myra to shake her head emphatically, her thin lips twitching, then tightening under the nervous strain.

"Nope, he ain't, but he air goin' to be sick a long time. He air the brat's pa, and I want to do somethin' for him."

"What?"

"He air wantin' to see ye, Tessibel. Will ye go to him?"

"Nope," Tess burst forth spontaneously.

Myra looked at her curiously.

"He ain't amountin' to much," she ventured, "but he air a pappy--that air somethin', ain't it?"

"Yep," mused Tessibel. "A daddy air more than a mammy."

So had Tessibel and Myra been brought up to believe. The squatter women fawned at the feet of their brutal husbands, as a beaten dog cringes to its master. That Ben Letts had broken Myra's arm on the ragged rocks, and yet the girl wanted to aid him, showed Tess the superiority of the male sex, and Myra loved the squint-eyed fisherman, she evidenced it in every action.

The lips of the younger squatter were sealed about the trail which she herself had laid in the midnight tragedy. But through the tender young heart flashed the hope that the experience with the dog would cause Ben Letts to turn his face toward the wretched, shrunken creature, who had suffered so much through him. She contemplated Myra an instant.