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"Nessie," he gasped, "is that it?"

The girl glanced up at him in affirmation and then gazed tenderly at the little morsel at her bosom. Abner bent over the wry little face with a gauze of dark baby hair on its head and its staring dark slate eyes which would change later into the brown of Abner's. Its tiny face was wrinkled against the weak sunshine and its doll-like fists made aimless motions about its breast. Abner touched it and felt a tiny hand grasp the end of his thumb.

"What's its name?" he asked in a shaken voice.

"Nessie Teeftallow Belshue," whispered Nessie, still looking at the baby.

"Teeftallow!"

Nessie nodded at her baby.

"Then he—knows?"

"Certainly, Abner, I—I told him before he—married me. I—I couldn't do anything else."

The irony of the situation swept over the hillman with a sickening effect. He looked at the mother of his little daughter.

"Jest to think! Jest to think, if you had waited two hours longer. . . ."

Nessie looked at him with a paling face.

"What—what do you mean?"

"Why, I—I come to Arntown that night, lookin' for you."

"Lookin' for me, to—to—marry me?"

Abner nodded. "But you had gone."

Nessie steadied herself with a hand on the well curb.

"I—didn't know—the men, the whitecaps—I was so scared, Abner . . ."

"Yes, I know—they beat me."

The young mother gazed with horrified eyes at Abner. She sat weakly down on the curb, looking as if she might fall into the well with her baby. She began weeping silently, her tears falling on her baby's clothes.

"Oh, oh, Abner, what a terrible thing! What a cruel thing! If they had only let us alone!"