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 wondered if she might not be safe now in dismissing him emphatically and finally; but she decided there was still danger lest Absalom might wreak his vengeance in some dreadful way upon the teacher.

Her heart was so full of happiness that she could tolerate even Absalom.

Only two short weeks of this brightness and glory, and then the blow fell—­the blow which blackened the sun in the heavens.  The teacher suddenly, and most mysteriously, resigned and went away.

No one knew why.  Whether it was to take a better position, or for what other possible reason, not a soul in the township could tell —­not even the Doc.

Strange to say, Fairchilds’s going, instead of pleasing Mr. Getz, was only an added offense to both him and Absalom.  They had thirsted for vengeance; they had longed to humiliate this “high-minded dude”; and now not only was the opportunity lost to them, but the “job” they had determined to wrest from him was indifferently hurled back in their faces—­he didn’t want it!  Absalom and Getz writhed in their helpless spleen.

Tillie’s undiscerning family did not for an instant attribute to its true cause her sudden change from radiant happiness to the weakness and lassitude that tell of mental anguish.  They were not given to seeing anything that was not entirely on the surface and perfectly obvious.