en, and in return to be
poorly fed and scantily clad,--Tillie nevertheless grew up in a world
apart, hidden to the sealed vision of those about her; as unknown to
them in her real life as though they had never looked upon her face;
and while her father never for an instant doubted the girl's entire
submission to him, she was day by day waxing stronger in her resolve to
heed Miss Margaret's constant advice and make a fight for her right to
the education her father had denied her, and for a life other than that
to which his will would consign her.

There were dark times when her steadfast purpose seemed impossible of
fulfilment. But Tillie felt she would rather die in the struggle than
become the sort of apathetic household drudge she beheld in her
stepmother--a condition into which it would be so easy to sink, once
she loosed her wagon from its star.

It was when Tillie was seventeen years old--a slight, frail girl, with
a look in her eyes as of one who lives in two worlds--that Absalom
Puntz, one Sunday evening in the fall of the year, saw her safe home
from meeting and asked permission to "keep comp'ny" with her.

Now that morning Tillie had received a letter from Miss Margaret (sent
to her, as always, under cover to the doctor), and Absalom's company on
the way from church was a most unwelcome interruption to her happy
brooding over the precious messages of love and helpfulness which those
letters always brought her.

A request for permission to "keep comp'ny" with a young lady meant a
very definite thing in Canaan Township. "Let's try each other," was
what it signified; and acceptance of the proposition involved on each
side an exclusion of all association with others of the opposite sex.
Tillie of course understood this.

"But you're of the World's people, Absalom," her soft, sweet voice
answered him. They were walking along in the dim evening on the high
dusty pike toward the Getz farm. "And I'm a member of meeting. I can't
marry out of the meeting."

"This long time a'ready, Tillie, I was thinkin' about givin' myself up
and turnin' plain," he assured her. "To be sure, I know I'd have to, to
git you. You've took notice, ain't you, how reg'lar I 'tend meeting?
Well, oncet me and you kin settle this here question of gittin'
married, I'm turnin' plain as soon as I otherwise [possibly] kin."

"I have never thought about keeping company, Absalom."

"Nearly all the girls around here as old as you has their frien