rs to go ag'in' pop like this here!"

"What reasons did they give for voting for the teacher?" Tillie asked,
her hysterics subsiding.

"They didn't give no reasons till they had him elected a'ready. Then
Adam Oberholzer he got up and he spoke how Teacher learned the scholars
so good and got along without lickin' 'em any (pop he had brung that up
AG'IN' Teacher, but Adam he sayed it was FUR), and that they better
mebbe give him five extry a month to make sure to keep such a kind man
to their childern, and one that learnt 'em so good."

Tillie showed signs, for an instant, of going off into another fit of
laughter.

"What's ailin' you?" her mother asked in mystification. "I never seen
you act so funny! You better go take a drink."

Tillie repressed herself and went on with her work.

During the remainder of that day, and, indeed, through all the week
that followed, she struggled to conceal from her father the exultation
of her spirits. She feared he would interpret it as a rejoicing over
his defeat, and there was really no such feeling in the girl's gentle
heart. She was even moved to some faint--it must be confessed, very
faint--pangs of pity for him as she saw, from day to day, how hard he
took his defeat. Apparently, it was to him a sickening blow to have his
"authority" as school director defied by a penniless young man who was
partly dependent upon his vote for daily bread. He suffered keenly in
his conviction that the teacher was as deeply exultant in his victory
as Getz had expected to be.

In these days, Tillie walked on air, and to Mrs. Getz and the children
she seemed almost another girl, with that happy vibration in her
usually sad voice, and that light of gladness in her soft pensive eyes.
The glorious consciousness was ever with her that the teacher was
always near--though she saw him but seldom. This, and the possession of
the precious certificate, her talisman to freedom, hidden always in her
bosom, made her daily drudgery easy to her and her hours full of hope
and happiness.

Deep as was Tillie's impression of the steadiness of purpose in
Absalom's character, she was nevertheless rather taken aback when, on
the Sunday night after that horrible experience in the woods, her
suitor stolidly presented himself at the farm-house, attired in his
best clothes, his whole aspect and bearing eloquent of the fact that
recent defeat had but made him more doggedly determined to win in the
end.

Tillie wonder