“Stop that, you brute!” Fairchilds, unable to control his fury, drew back and struck the big man squarely on the chest.  Getz staggered back, amazement at this unlooked-for attack for a moment getting the better of his indignation.  He had expected to find the teacher cowed with fear at being discovered by a director and a director’s son in a situation displeasing to them.

“Let the child alone, you great coward—­or I ’ll horsewhip you!”

Getz recovered himself.  His face was black with passion.  He lifted the horsewhip which he carried.

“You’ll horsewhip me—­me, Jake Getz, that can put you off William Penn to-morrow if I want!  Will you do it with this here? he demanded, grasping the whip more tightly and lifting it to strike —­but before it could descend, Fairchilds wrenched it out of his hand.

“Yes,” he responded, “if you dare to touch that child again, you shameless dog!”

Tillie, with anguished eyes, stood motionless as marble, while Absalom, with clenched fists, awaited his opportunity.

“If I dare!” roared Getz.  “If I have dare to touch my own child!” He turned to Tillie.  “Come along,” he exclaimed, giving her a cuff with his great paw; and instantly the whip came down with stinging swiftness on his wrist.  With a bellow of pain, Getz turned on Fairchilds, and at the same moment, Absalom sprang on him from behind, and with one blow of his brawny arm brought the teacher to the ground.  Getz sprawled over his fallen antagonist and snatched his whip from him.

“Come on, Absalom—­we’ll learn him oncet!” he cried fiercely.  “We’ll learn him what horsewhippin’ is!  We’ll give him a lickin’ he won’t forget!”

Absalom laughed aloud in his delight at this chance to avenge his own defeat at the hands of the teacher, and with clumsy speed the two men set about binding the feet of the half-senseless Fairchilds with Absalom’s suspenders.

Tillie felt herself spellbound, powerless to move or to cry out.

“Now!” cried Getz to Absalom, “git back, and I’ll give it to him!”

The teacher, stripped of his two coats and bound hand and foot, was rolled over on his face.  He uttered no word of protest, though they all saw that he had recovered consciousness.  The truth was, he simply recognized the uselessness of demurring.

“Warm him up, so he don’t take cold!” shouted Absalom—­and even as he spoke, Jake Getz’s heavy arm brought the lash down upon Fairchilds’s back.

At the spiteful sound, life came back to Tillie.  Like a wild thing, she sprang between them, seized her father’s arm and hung upon it.  “Listen to me!  Listen!  Father!  If you strike him again, I’ll marry Absalom to-morrow!”

By inspiration she had hit upon the one argument that would move him.

Her father tried to shake her off, but she clung to his arm with the strength of madness, knowing that if she could make him grasp, even in his passionate anger, the real import of her threat, he would yield to her.