“You mind to your own business!” spluttered Asalom, struggling to free his hand, and, to his own surprise, failing.  Quickly he drew back his left fist and again tried to strike, only to find it too caught and held, with no apparent effort on the part of the teacher.  Tillie, at first pale with fright at what had promised to be so unequal a contest in view of the teacher’s slight frame and the brawny, muscular strength of Absalom, felt her pulses bound with a thrill of admiration for this cool, quiet force which could render the other’s fury so helpless; while at the same time she felt sick with shame.

“Blame you!” cried Absalom, wildly.  “Le’ me be!  It don’t make nothin’ to you if I kiss my girl!  I don’t owe you nothin’!  You le’ me be!”

“Certainly,” returned Fairchilds, cheerfully.  “Just stop annoying Miss Tillie, that’s all I want."’

He dropped the fellow’s hands and deliberately drew out his handkerchief to wipe his own.

A third time Absalom made a furious dash at him, to find his two wrists caught in the vise-like grip of his antagonist.

“Tut, tut, Absalom, this is quite enough.  Behave yourself, or I shall be obliged to hurt you.”

“You—­you white-faced, woman-faced mackerel!  You think you kin hurt me!  You—­”

“Now then,” Fairchilds again dropped Absalom’s hands and picked up from the settee the book which the youth had presented to Tillie.  “Here, Absalom, take your ‘What a Young Husband Ought to Know’ and go home.”

Something in the teacher’s quiet, confident tone cowed Absalom completely—­for the time being, at least.  He was conquered.  It was very bewildering.  The man before him was not half his weight and was not in the least ruffled.  How had he so easily “licked” him?  Absalom, by reason of his stalwart physique and the fact that his father was a director, had, during most of his school life, found pleasing diversion in keeping the various teachers of William Penn cowed before him.  He now saw his supremacy in that quarter at an end—­physically speaking at least.  There might be a moral point of attack.

“Look-ahere!” he blustered.  “Do you know my pop’s Nathaniel Puntz, the director?”

“You are a credit to him, Absalom.  By the way, will you take a message to him from me?  Tell him, please, that the lock on the school-room door is broken, and I’d be greatly obliged if he would send up a lock-smith to mend it.”

Absalom looked discouraged.  A Harvard graduate was, manifestly, a freak of nature—­invulnerable at all points.

“If pop gets down on you, you won’t be long at William Penn!” he bullied.  “You’ll soon get chased off your job!”

“My job at breaking you in?  Well, well, I might be spending my time more profitably, that’s so.”

“You go on out of here and le’ me alone with my girl!” quavered Absalom, blinking away tears of rage.