k you, but--I want him to stay."

"Yes? I beg pardon for my intrusion. Good night."

He turned away somewhat abruptly and left the room.

And Tillie was again alone with Absalom.

IN his chamber, getting ready for bed, Fairchilds's thoughts idly dwelt
upon the strange contradictions he seemed to see in the character of
the little Mennonite maiden. He had thought that he recognized in her a
difference from the rest of this household--a difference in speech, in
feature, in countenance, in her whole personality. And yet she could
allow the amorous attentions of that coarse, stupid cub; and her
protestations against the fellow's liberties with her had been mere
coquetry. Well, he would be careful, another time, how he played the
part of a Don Quixote.

Meantime Tillie, with suddenly developed histrionic skill, was, by a
Spartan self-sacrifice in submitting to Absalom's love-making,
overcoming his wrath against the teacher. Absalom never suspected how
he was being played upon, or what a mere tool he was in the hands of
this gentle little girl, when, somewhat to his own surprise, he found
himself half promising that the teacher should not be complained of to
his father. The infinite tact and scheming it required on Tillie's part
to elicit this assurance without further arousing his jealousy left
her, at the end of his prolonged sitting-up, utterly exhausted.

Yet when at last her weary head found her pillow, it was not to rest or
sleep. A haunting, fearful certainty possessed her. "Dumm" as he was,
Absalom, in his invulnerable persistency, had become to the tired,
tortured girl simply an irresistible force of Nature. And Tillie felt
that, struggle as she might against him, there would come a day when
she could fight no longer, and so at last she must fall a victim to
this incarnation of Dutch determination.

XVIII

TILLIE REVEALS HERSELF

In the next few days, Tillie tried in vain to summon courage to appeal
to the teacher for assistance in her winter's study. Day after day she
resolved to speak to him, and as often postponed it, unable to conquer
her shyness. Meantime, however, under the stimulus of his constant
presence, she applied herself in every spare moment to the school-books
used by her two cousins, and in this unaided work she succeeded, as
usual, in making headway.

Fairchilds's attention was arrested by the frequent picture of the
little Mennonite maiden conning school-books by lamp-light.

O