discipline must be maintained even at a
financial loss. Then, too, penurious and saving as he was, he was
strictly honest, and he would not have thought it right to let his
sister pay for his child's necessary wearing-apparel.

"No, Tillie's got to be punished. When I want her to have new caps,
I'll buy 'em fur her."

Tillie reentered the room with the precious bits of linen tenderly
wrapped up in tissue paper. Her pallor was now gone, and her eyes were
red with crying. She came to her father's side and handed him the soft
bundle.

"These here caps," he said to her, "mom can use fur night-caps, or
what. When you buy somepin unknownst to me, Tillie, I ain't leavin' you
KEEP it! Now go 'long back to your dishes. And next Saturday, when I
come, I want to find them clo'es done, do you understand?"

Tillie's eyes followed the parcel as it was crushed ruthlessly into her
father's coat pocket--and she did not heed his question.

"Do you hear me, Tillie?" he demanded.

"Yes," she answered, looking up at him with brimming eyes.

His sister, watching them from across the room, saw in the man's face
the working of conflicting feelings--his stern displeasure warring with
his affection. Mrs. Wackernagel had realized, ever since Tillie had
come to live with her, that "Jake's" brief weekly visits to his
daughter were a pleasure to the hard man; and not only because of the
two dollars which he came to collect. Just now, she could see how he
hated to part from her in anger. Justice having been meted out in the
form of the crushed and forfeited caps in his pocket, he would fain
take leave of the girl with some expression of his kindlier feelings
toward her.

"Now are you behavin' yourself--like a good girl--till I come again?"
he asked, laying his hand upon her shoulder.

"Yes," she said dully.

"Then give me good-b'y." She held up her face and submitted to his kiss.

"Good-by, Em. And mind you stop spoilin' my girl fur me!"

He opened the door and went away.

And Fairchilds, an unwilling witness to the father's brutality, felt
every nerve in his body tingle with a longing first to break the head
of that brutal Dutchman, and then to go and take little Tillie in his
arms and kiss her. To work off his feelings, he sprang up from the
settee, put on his hat, and flung out of the house to walk down to "the
krik."

"Never you mind, Tillie," her aunt consoled her. "I'm goin' in town
next Wednesday, and I'm buyin' you some cap