On market day, he had to go to Lancaster City, and when his efforts to force Tillie to sign a cheek payable to him had proved vain, his baffled greed again roused him to uncontrollable fury, and lifting his hand, he struck her across the cheek.

Tillie reeled and would have fallen had he not caught her, his anger instantly cooling in his fear lest she faint again.  But Tillie had no idea of fainting.  “Let me go,” she said quietly, drawing her arm out of his clasp.  Turning quickly away, she walked straight out of the room and up-stairs to her chamber.

Her one change of clothing she quickly tied into a bundle, and putting on her bonnet and shawl, she walked down-stairs and out of the house.

“Where you goin’?” her father demanded roughly as he followed her out on the porch.

She did not answer, but walked on to the gate.  In an instant he had overtaken her and stood squarely in her path.

“Where you goin’ to?” he repeated.

“To town, to board at the store.”

He dragged her, almost by main force, back into the house, and all that evening kept a watch upon her until he knew that she was in bed.

Next morning, Tillie carried her bundle of clothing to school with her, and at the noon recess she went to the family who kept the village store and engaged board with them, saying she could not stand the daily walks to and from school.

When, at six o’clock that evening, she had not returned home, her father drove in to the village store to get her.  But she locked herself in her bedroom and would not come out.

In the next few weeks he tried every means of force at his command, but in vain; and at last he humbled himself to propose a compromise.

“I’ll leave you have some of your money every month, Tillie,—­as much as ten dollars,—­if you’ll give me the rest, still.”

“Why should I give it to you, father?  How would that benefit me?” she said, with a rather wicked relish in turning the tables on him and applying his life principle of selfishness to her own case.

Her father did not know how to meet it.  Never before in her life, to his knowledge, had Tillie considered her own benefit before his and that of his wife and children.  That she should dare to do so now seemed to knock the foundations from under him.

“When I’m dead, won’t you and the others inherit off of me all I’ve saved?” he feebly inquired.

“But that will be when I’m too old to enjoy or profit by it.”

“How much do you want I should give you out of your wages every month, then?”

“You can’t give me what is not yours to give.”

“Now don’t you be sassin’ me, or I’ll learn you!”

They were alone in her school-room on a late February afternoon, after school had been dismissed.  Tillie quickly rose and reached for her shawl and bonnet.  She usually tried to avoid giving him an opportunity like this for bullying her, with no one by to protect her.