ation did almost drive her to a frenzy. After so many years of
struggle, just as she was tasting success, to lose all the fruits of
her labor--how could she endure it? With the work she loved taken away
from her, how could she bear the gnawing hunger at her heart for the
presence of him unto whom was every thought of her brain and every
throbbing pulse of her soul? The future seemed to stretch before her, a
terrible, an unendurable blank.

The first week of April was the time fixed for the meeting of the Board
at which she was to be "chased off her job"; and as the fatal day drew
near, a sort of lethargy settled upon her, and she ceased to straggle,
even in spirit, against the inevitable.

"Well, Tillie," the doctor said, with a long sigh, as he came into the
store at six o'clock on the eventful evening, and leaned over the
counter to talk to the girl, "they're all conwened by now, over there
in the hotel parlor. Your pop and Nathaniel Puntz they're lookin'
wonderful important. Tour pop," he vindictively added, "is just
chucklin' at the idea of gettin' you home under his thumb ag'in!"

Tillie did not speak. She sat behind the counter, her cheeks resting on
the backs of her hands, her wistful eyes gazing past the doctor toward
the red light in the hotel windows across the way.

"Golly! but I'd of liked to beat 'em out on this here game! But they've
got us, Tillie! They'll be wotin' you out of your job any minute now.
And then your pop'll be comin' over here to fetch you along home! Oh!
If he wasn't your pop I c'd say somethin' real perfane about him."

Tillie drew a long breath; but she did not speak. She could not. It
seemed to her that she had come to the end of everything.

"Look-ahere, Tillie," the doctor spoke suddenly, "you just up and get
ahead of 'em all--you just take yourself over to the Millersville
Normal! You've got some money saved, ain't you?"

"Yes!" A ray of hope kindled in her eyes. "I have saved one hundred and
twenty-five dollars! I should have more than that if I had not returned
to the world's dress."

"A hundred and twenty-five's plenty enough for a good starter at the
Millersville Normal," said the doctor.

"But," Tillie hesitated, "this is April, and the spring term closes in
three months. What should I do and where could I go after that? If I
made such a break with father, he might refuse to take me home even if
I had nowhere else to go. Could I risk that?"

The doctor leaned his head