y her throbbing head.

There were present six members of the Board--two Amishmen, one Old
Mennonite, one patriarchal-looking Dunkard, one New Mennonite, and one
Evangelical, the difference in their religious creeds being attested by
their various costumes and the various cuts of beard and hair. The
Evangelical, the New Mennonite, and the Amishmen were farmers, the
Dunkard kept the store and the post-office, and the Old Mennonite was
the stage-driver. Jacob Getz was the Evangelical; and Nathaniel Puntz,
Absalom's father, the New Mennonite.

The investigation of the applicant was opened up by the president of
the Board, a long-haired Amishman, whose clothes were fastened by hooks
and eyes instead of buttons and buttonholes, these latter being
considered by his sect as a worldly vanity.

"What was your experience a'ready as a teacher?"

Fairchilds replied that he had never had any.

Tillie's heart sank as, from her post in the corner, she heard this
answer. Would the members think for one moment of paying forty dollars
a month to a teacher without experience? She was sure they had never
before done so. They were shaking their heads gravely over it, she
could see.

But the investigation proceeded.

"What was your Persuasion then?"

Tillie saw, in the teacher's hesitation, that he did not understand the
question.

"My 'Persuasion'? Oh! I see. You mean my Church?"

"Yes, what's your conwictions?"

He considered a moment. Tillie hung breathlessly upon his answer. She
knew how much depended upon it with this Board of "plain" people. Could
he assure them that he was "a Bible Christian"? Otherwise, they would
never elect him to the New Canaan school. He gave his reply, presently,
in a tone suggesting his having at that moment recalled to memory just
what his "Persuasion" was. "Let me see--yes--I'm a Truth-Seeker."

"What's that again?" inquired the president, with interest. "I have not
heard yet of that Persuasion."

"A Truth-Seeker," he gravely explained, "is one who believes in--eh--in
a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite,
coherent heterogeneity."

The members looked at each other cautiously.

"Is that the English you're speakin', or whatever?" asked the Dunkard
member. "Some of them words ain't familiar with me till now, and I
don't know right what they mean."

"Yes, I'm talking English," nodded the applicant. "We also believe," he
added, growing bolder, "in the fundamental,