“True enough.  I stand corrected.  Then accept my sincere sympathy.”  He smiled whimsically.

Tillie lifted her eyes to his face, and their pretty look of bewilderment made him long to stoop and snatch a kiss from her lips.  But he resisted the temptation.

“I refer to your engagement to Absalom.  That’s one reason why I wanted you to come out here with me this afternoon—­so that you could tell me about it—­and explain to me what made you give up all your plans.  What will your Miss Margaret say?”

Tillie stopped short, her cheeks reddening.

“What makes you think I am promised to Absalom?”

“The fact is, I’ve only his word for it.”

“He told you that?”

“Certainly.  Isn’t it true?”

“Do you think so poorly of me?” Tillie asked in a low voice.

He looked at her quickly.  “Tillie, I’m sorry; I ought not to have believed it for an instant!”

“I have a higher ambition in life than to settle down to take care of Absalom Puntz!” said Tillie, fire in her soft eyes, and an unwonted vibration in her gentle voice.

“My credulity was an insult to you!”

“Absalom did not mean to tell you a lie.  He has made up his mind to have me, so he thinks it is all as good as settled.  Sometimes I am almost afraid he will win me just by thinking he is going to.”

“Send him about his business!  Don’t keep up this folly, dear child!”

“I would rather stand Absalom,” she faltered, “than stand having you go away.”

“But, Tillie,” he turned almost fiercely upon her—­“Tillie, I would rather see you dead at my feet than to see your soul tied to that clod of earth!”

A wild thrill of rapture shot through Tillie’s heart at his words.  For an instant she looked up at him, her soul shining in her eyes.  “Does he—­does he—­care that much what happens to me?” throbbed in her brain.

For the first time Fairchilds fully realized, with shame at his blind selfishness, the danger and the cruelty of his intimate friendship with this little Mennonite maid.  For her it could but end in a heartbreak; for him—­“I have been a cad, a despicable cad!” he told himself in bitter self-reproach.  “If I had only known!  But now it’s too late—­unless—­” In his mind he rapidly went over the simple history of their friendship as they walked along; and, busy with her own thought, Tillie did not notice his abstraction.

“Tillie,” he said suddenly.  “Next Saturday there is an examination of applicants for certificates at East Donegal.  You must take that examination.  You are perfectly well prepared to pass it.”

“Oh, do you really, really think I am?” the girl cried breathlessly.

“I know it.  The only question is, How are you going to get off to attend the examination?”

“Father will be at the Lancaster market on Saturday morning!”

“Then I’ll hire a buggy, come out to the farm, and carry you off!”