Three days had passed since Fairchilds’s departure—­three days of utter blackness to Tillie; and on the third day she went to pay her weekly visit to the tree-hollow in the woods where she was wont to place Miss Margaret’s letters.

On this day she found, to her amazement, two letters.  Her knees shook as she recognized the teacher’s handwriting on one of them.

There was no stamp and no post-mark on the envelop.  He had evidently written the letter before leaving, and had left it with the doctor to be delivered to her.

Tillie had always been obliged to maneuver skilfully in order to get away from the house long enough to pay these weekly visits to the tree-hollow; and she nearly always read her letter from Miss Margaret at night by a candle, when the household was asleep.

But now, heedless of consequences, she sat down on a snow-covered log and opened Fairchilds’s letter, her teeth chattering with more than cold.

It was only a note, written in great haste and evidently under some excitement.  It told her of his immediate departure for Cambridge to accept a rather profitable private tutorship to a rich man’s son.  He would write to Tillie, later, when he could.  Meanwhile, God bless her—­and he was always her friend.  That was all.  He gave her no address and did not speak of her writing to him.

Tillie walked home in a dream.  All that evening, she was so “dopplig” as finally to call forth a sharp rebuke from her father, to which she paid not the slightest heed.

Would she ever see him again, her heart kept asking?  Would he really write to her again?  Where was he at this moment, and what was he doing?  Did he send one thought to her, so far away, so desolate?  Did he have in any least degree the desire, the yearning, for her that she had for him?

Tillie felt a pang of remorse for her disloyalty to Miss Margaret when she realized that she had almost forgotten that always precious letter.  When, a little past midnight, she took it from her dress pocket she noticed what had before escaped her—­some erratic writing in lead on the back of the envelop.  It was in the doctor’s strenuous hand.

“Willyam Pens as good as yoorn ive got them all promist but your pop to wote for you at the bored meating saterdy its to be a surprize party for your pop.”

XXIV

THE REVOLT OF TILLIE

At half-past seven o’clock on Saturday evening, the School Board once more convened in the hotel parlor, for the purpose of electing Fairchilds’s successor.

“Up till now,” Mr. Getz had remarked at the supper-table, “I ain’t been tole of no candidate applyin’ fur William Penn, and here to-night we meet to elect him—­or her if she’s a female.”

Tillie’s heart had jumped to her throat as she heard him, wondering how he would take it when they announced to him that the applicant was none other than his own daughter—­whether he would be angry at her long deception, or gratified at the prospect of her earning so much money—­for, of course, it would never occur to him that she would dare refuse to give him every cent she received.