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Coniston — Complete

by Winston Churchill · English · Gutenberg #3766 · 969,016 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Coniston — Complete

Author: Winston Churchill


        
Release date: October 17, 2004 [eBook #3766]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3766

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONISTON — COMPLETE ***



Produced by Pat Castevans and David Widger





CONISTON

By Winston Churchill

   “We have been compelled to see what was weak in democracy as well as
   what was strong. We have begun obscurely to recognize that things
   do not go of themselves, and that popular government is not in
   itself a panacea, is no better than any other form except as the
   virtue and wisdom of the people make it so, and that when men
   undertake to do their own kingship, they enter upon, the dangers and
   responsibilities as well as the privileges of the function. Above
   all, it looks as if we were on the way to be persuaded that no
   government can be carried on by declamation.”

                 --JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.




CONISTON




BOOK I




CHAPTER I

First I am to write a love-story of long ago, of a time some little
while after General Jackson had got into the White House and had shown
the world what a real democracy was. The Era of the first six Presidents
had closed, and a new Era had begun. I am speaking of political Eras.
Certain gentlemen, with a pious belief in democracy, but with a firmer
determination to get on top, arose,--and got in top. So many of these
gentlemen arose in the different states, and they were so clever, and
they found so many chinks in the Constitution to crawl through and steal
the people's chestnuts, that the Era may be called the Boss-Era. After
the Boss came along certain Things without souls, but of many minds,
and found more chinks in the Constitution: bigger chinks, for the Things
were bigger, and they stole more chestnuts. But I am getting far ahead
of my love-story--and of my book.

The reader is warned that this first love-story will, in a few chapters,
come to an end: and not to a happy end--otherwise there would be no
book. Lest he should throw the book away when he arrives at this page,
it is only fair to tell him that there is another and a much longer love
story later on, if he will only continue to read, in which, it is hoped,
he may not be disappointed.

The hills seem to leap up against the sky as I describe that region
where Cynthia Ware was born, and the very old country names help to
summon up the picture. Coniston Mountain, called by some the Blue
Mountain, clad in Hercynian forests, ten good miles in length, north and
south, with its notch road that winds over the saddle behind the withers
of it. Coniston Water, that oozes out from under the loam in a hundred
places, on the eastern slope, gathers into a rushing stream to cleave
the very granite, flows southward around the south end of Coniston
Mountain, and having turned the mills at Brampton, idles through meadows
westward in its own green valley until it comes to Harwich, where it
works again and tumbles into a river. Brampton and Harwich are rivals,
but Coniston Water gives of its power impartially to each. From the
little farm clearings on the western slope of Coniston Mountain you can
sweep the broad valley of a certain broad river where grew (and grow
still) the giant pines that gave many a mast to King George's navy as
tribute for the land. And beyond that river rises beautiful Farewell
Mountain of many colors, now sapphire, now amethyst, its crest rimmed
about at evening with saffron flame; and, beyond Farewell, the emerald
billows of the western peaks catching the level light. A dozen little
brooks are born high among the western spruces on Coniston to score
deep, cool valleys in their way through Clovelly township to the broad
music of the water and fresh river-valleys full of the music of the
water and fresh with the odor of the ferns.

To this day the railroad has not reached Coniston Village--nay, nor
Coniston Flat, four miles nearer Brampton. The village lies on its own
little shelf under the forest-clad slope of the mountain, and in the
midst of its dozen houses is the green triangle where the militia used
to drill on June days. At one end of the triangle is the great pine mast
that graced no frigate of George's, but flew the stars and stripes
on many a liberty day. Across the road is Jonah Winch's store, with a
platform so high that a man may step off his horse directly on to it;
with its checker-paned windows, with its dark interior smelling of
coffee and apples and molasses, yes, and of Endea rum--for this was
before the days of the revivals.

How those checker-paned windows bring back the picture of that village
green! The meeting-house has them, lantern-like, wide and high, in three
sashes--white meeting-house, seat alike of government and religion, with
its terraced steeple, with its classic porches north and south. Behind
it is the long shed, and in front, rising out of the milkweed and the
flowering thistle, the horse block of the first meeting-house, where
many a pillion has left its burden in times bygone. Honest Jock
Hallowell built that second meeting-house--was, indeed, still building
it at the time of which we write. He had hewn every beam and king post
in it, and set every plate and slip. And Jock Hallowell is the man who,
unwittingly starts this chronicle.

At noon, on one of those madcap April days of that Coniston country,
Jock descended from his work on the steeple to perceive the ungainly
figure of Jethro Bass coming toward him across the green. Jethro was
about thirty years of age, and he wore a coonskin cap even in those
days, and trousers tacked into his boots. He carried his big head
bent forward, a little to one aide, and was not, at first sight, a
prepossessing-looking person. As our story largely concerns him and we
must get started somehow, it may as well be to fix a little attention on
him.

“Heigho!” said Jock, rubbing his hands on his leather apron.

“H-how be you, Jock?” said Jethro, stopping.

“Heigho!” cried Jock, “what's this game of fox and geese you're
a-playin' among the farmers?”

“C-callate to git the steeple done before frost?” inquired Jethro,
without so much as a smile. “B-build it tight, Jock--b-build it tight.”

“Guess he'll build his'n tight, whatever it is,” said Jock, looking
after him as Jethro made his way to the little tannery near by.

Let it be known that there was such a thing as social rank in Coniston;
and something which, for the sake of an advantageous parallel, we may
call an Established Church. Coniston was a Congregational town still,
and the deacons and dignitaries of that church were likewise the pillars
of the state. Not many years before the time of which we write actual
disestablishment had occurred, when the town ceased--as a town--to pay
the salary of Priest Ware, as the minister was called. The father
of Jethro Bass, Nathan the currier, had once, in a youthful lapse,
permitted a Baptist preacher to immerse him in Coniston Water. This had
been the extent of Nathan's religion; Jethro had none at all, and was,
for this and other reasons, somewhere near the bottom of the social
scale.

“Fox and geese!” repeated Jock, with his eyes still on Jethro's
retreating back. The builder of the meetinghouse rubbed a great, brown
arm, scratched his head, and turned and came face to face with Cynthia
Ware, in a poke bonnet.

Contrast is a favorite trick of authors, and no greater contrast is to
be had in Coniston than that between Cynthia Ware and Jethro Bass. In
the first place; Cynthia was the minister's daughter, and twenty-one.
I can summon her now under the great maples of the village street, a
virginal figure, gray eyes that kindled the face shaded by the poke
bonnet, and up you went above the clouds.

“What about fox and geese, Jock?” said Cynthia.

“Jethro Bass,” said Jock, who, by reason of his ability, was a
privileged character. “Mark my words, Cynthy, Jethro Bass is an
all-fired sight smarter that folks in this town think he be. They don't
take notice of him, because he don't say much, and stutters. He hain't
be'n eddicated a great deal, but I wouldn't be afeard to warrant he'd
make a racket in the world some of these days.”

“Jock Hallowell!” cried Cynthia, the gray beginning to dance, “I suppose
you think Jethro's going to be President.”

“All right,” said Jock, “you can laugh. Ever talked with Jethro?”

“I've hardly spoken two words to him in my life,” she replied. And it
was true, although the little white parsonage was scarce two hundred
yards from the tannery house.

“Jethro's never ailed much,” Jock remarked, having reference to
Cynthia's proclivities for visiting the sick. “I've seed a good many
different men in my time, and I tell you, Cynthia Ware, that Jethro's
got a kind of power you don't often come acrost. Folks don't suspicion
it.”

In spite of herself, Cynthia was impressed by the ring of sincerity in
the builder's voice. Now that she thought of it, there was rugged power
in Jethro's face, especially when he took off the coonskin cap. She
always nodded a greeting when she saw him in the tannery yard or on the
road, and sometimes he nodded back, but oftener he had not appeared to
see her. She had thought this failure to nod stupidity, but it might
after all be abstraction.

“What makes you think he has ability?” she asked, picking flowers from a
bunch of arbutus she held.

“He's rich, for one thing,” said Jock. He had not intended a
dissertation on Jethro Bass, but he felt bound to defend his statements.

“Rich!”

“Wal, he hain't poor. He's got as many as thirty mortgages round among
the farmers--some on land, and some on cattle.”

“How did he make the money?” demanded Cynthia, in surprise.

“Hides an' wool an' bark--turned 'em over an' swep' in. Gits a load, and
Lyman Hull drives him down to Boston with that six-hoss team. Lyman gits
drunk, Jethro keeps sober and saves.”

Jock began to fashion some wooden pegs with his adze, for nails were
scarce in those days. Still Cynthia lingered, picking flowers from the
bunch.

“What did you mean by 'fox and geese' Jock?” she said presently.

Jock laughed. He did not belong to the Establishment, but was a
Universalist; politically he admired General Jackson. “What'd you say if
Jethro was Chairman of the next Board of Selectmen?” he demanded.

No wonder Cynthia gasped. Jethro Bass, Chairman of the Board, in the
honored seat of Deacon Moses Hatch, the perquisite of the church in
Coniston! The idea was heresy. As a matter of fact, Jock himself uttered
it as a playful exaggeration. Certain nonconformist farmers, of whom
there were not a few in the town, had come into Jonah Winch's store that
morning; and Jabez Miller, who lived on the north slope, had taken away
the breath of the orthodox by suggesting that Jethro Bass be nominated
for town office. Jock Hallowell had paused once or twice on his work
on the steeple to look across the tree-tops at Coniston shouldering the
sky. He had been putting two and two together, and now he was merely
making five out of it, instead of four. He remembered that Jethro Bass
had for some years been journeying through the town, baying his hides
and wool, and collecting the interest on his mortgages.

Cynthia would have liked to reprove Jock Hallowell, and tell him
there were some subjects which should not be joked about. Jethro Bass,
Chairman of the Board of Selectmen!

“Well, here comes, young Moses, I do believe,” said Jock, gathering his
pegs into his apron and preparing to ascend once more. “Callated he'd
spring up pretty soon.”

“Jock, you do talk foolishly for a man who is able to build a church,”
 said Cynthia, as she walked away. The young Moses referred to was Moses
Hatch, Junior, son of the pillar of the Church and State, and it was an
open secret that he was madly in love with Cynthia. Let it be said of
him that he was a steady-going young man, and that he sighed for the
moon.

“Moses,” said the girl, when they came in sight of the elms that, shaded
the gable of the parsonage, “what do you think of Jethro Bass?”

“Jethro Bass!” exclaimed honest Moses, “whatever put him into your head,
Cynthy?” Had she mentioned perhaps, any other young man in Coniston,
Moses would have been eaten with jealousy.

“Oh, Jock was joking about him. What do you think of him?”

“Never thought one way or t'other,” he answered. “Jethro never had
much to do with the boys. He's always in that tannery, or out buyin' of
hides. He does make a sharp bargain when he buys a hide. We always goes
shares on our'n.”

Cynthia was not only the minister's daughter,--distinction enough,--her
reputation for learning was spread through the country roundabout, and
at the age of twenty she had had an offer to teach school in Harwich.
Once a week in summer she went to Brampton, to the Social library there,
and sat at the feet of that Miss Lucretia Penniman of whom Brampton has
ever been so proud--Lucretia Penniman, one of the first to sound the
clarion note for the intellectual independence of American women; who
wrote the “Hymn to Coniston”; who, to the awe of her townspeople,
went out into the great world and became editress of a famous woman's
journal, and knew Longfellow and Hawthorne and Bryant. Miss Lucretia
it was who started the Brampton Social Library, and filled it with such
books as both sexes might read with profit. Never was there a stricter
index than hers. Cynthia, Miss Lucretia loved, and the training of that
mind was the pleasantest task of her life.

Curiosity as a factor has never, perhaps, been given its proper weight
by philosophers. Besides being fatal to a certain domestic animal, as
an instigating force it has brought joy and sorrow into the lives of men
and women, and made and marred careers. And curiosity now laid hold of
Cynthia Ware. Why in the world she should ever have been curious about
Jethro Bass is a mystery to many, for the two of them were as far apart
as the poles. Cynthia, of all people, took to watching the tanner's son,
and listening to the brief colloquies he had with other men at Jonah
Winch's store, when she went there to buy things for the parsonage; and
it seemed to her that Jock had not been altogether wrong, and that there
was in the man an indefinable but very compelling force. And when
a woman begins to admit that a man has force, her curiosity usually
increases. On one or two of these occasions Cynthia had been startled to
find his eyes fixed upon her, and though the feeling she had was closely
akin to fear, she found something distinctly pleasurable in it.

May came, and the pools dried up, the orchards were pink and white,
the birches and the maples were all yellow-green on the mountain sides
against the dark pines, and Cynthia was driving the minister's gig to
Brampton. Ahead of her, in the canon made by the road between the great
woods, strode an uncouth but powerful figure--coonskin cap, homespun
breeches tucked into boots, and all. The gig slowed down, and Cynthia
began to tremble with that same delightful fear. She knew it must be
wicked, because she liked it so much. Unaccountable thing! She felt
all akin to the nature about her, and her blood was coursing as the sap
rushes through a tree. She would not speak to him; of that she was sure,
and equally sure that he would not speak to her. The horse was walking
now, and suddenly Jethro Bass faced around, and her heart stood still.

“H-how be you, Cynthy?” he asked.

“How do you do, Jethro?”

A thrush in the woods began to sing a hymn, and they listened. After
that a silence, save for the notes of answering birds quickened by the
song, the minister's horse nibbling at the bushes. Cynthia herself could
not have explained why she lingered. Suddenly he shot a question at her.

“Where be you goin'?”

“To Brampton, to get Miss Lucretia to change this book,” and she held it
up from her lap. It was a very large book.

“Wh-what's it about,” he demanded.

“Napoleon Bonaparte.”

“Who was be?”

“He was a very strong man. He began life poor and unknown, and fought
his way upward until he conquered the world.”

“C-conquered the world, did you say? Conquered the world?”

“Yes.”

Jethro pondered.

“Guess there's somethin' wrong about that book--somethin' wrong. Conquer
the United States?”

Cynthia smiled. She herself did not realize that we were not a part of
the world, then.

“He conquered Europe; where all the kings and queens are, and became a
king himself--an emperor.”

“I want to-know!” said Jethro. “You said he was a poor boy?”

“Why don't you read the book, Jethro?” Cynthia answered. “I am sure I
can get Miss Lucretia to let you have it.”

“Don't know as I'd understand it,” he demurred.

“I'll try to explain what you don't understand,” said Cynthia, and her
heart gave a bound at the very idea.

“Will You?” he said, looking at her eagerly. “Will you? You mean it?”

“Certainly,” she answered, and blushed, not knowing why. “I-I must be
going,” and she gathered up the reins.

“When will you give it to me?”

“I'll stop at the tannery when I come back from Brampton,” she said, and
drove on. Once she gave a fleeting glance over her shoulder, and he was
still standing where she had left him.

When she returned, in the yellow afternoon light that flowed over wood
and pasture, he came out of the tannery door. Jake Wheeler or Speedy
Bates, the journeyman tailoress, from whom little escaped, could not
have said it was by design--thought nothing, indeed, of that part of it.

“As I live!” cried Speedy from the window to Aunt Lucy Prescott in the
bed, “if Cynthy ain't givin' him a book as big as the Bible!”

Aunt Lucy hoped, first, that it was the Bible, and second, that Jethro
would read it. Aunt Lucy, and Established Church Coniston in general,
believed in snatching brands from the burning, and who so deft as
Cynthia at this kind of snatching! So Cynthia herself was a hypocrite
for once, and did not know it. At that time Jethro's sins were mostly
of omission. As far as rum was concerned, he was a creature after
Aunt Lucy's own heart, for he never touched it: true, gaunt Deacon
Ira Perkins, tithing-man, had once chided him for breaking the
Sabbath--shooting at a fox.

To return to the book. As long as he lived, Jethro looked back to the
joy of the monumental task of mastering its contents. In his mind,
Napoleon became a rough Yankee general; of the cities, villages, and
fortress he formed as accurate a picture as a resident of Venice from
Marco Polo's account of Tartary. Jethro had learned to read, after
a fashion, to write, add, multiply, and divide. He knew that George
Washington and certain barefooted companions had forced a proud Britain
to her knees, and much of the warring in the book took color from
Captain Timothy Prescott's stories of General Stark and his campaigns,
heard at Jonah Winch's store. What Paris looked like, or Berlin, or the
Hospice of St. Bernard--though imaged by a winter Coniston--troubled
Jethro not at all; the thing that stuck in his mind was that
Napoleon--for a considerable time, at least--compelled men to do his
bidding. Constitutions crumble before the Strong. Not that Jethro
philosophized about constitutions. Existing conditions presented
themselves, and it occurred to him that there were crevices in the town
system, and ways into power through the crevices for men clever enough
to find them.

A week later, and in these same great woods on the way to Brampton,
Cynthia overtook him once more. It was characteristic of him that he
plunged at once into the subject uppermost in his mind.

“Not a very big place, this Corsica--not a very big place.”

“A little island in the Mediterranean,” said Cynthia.

“Hum. Country folks, the Bonapartes--country folks?”

Cynthia laughed.

“I suppose you might call them so,” she said. “They were poor, and lived
out of the world.”

“He was a smart man. But he found things goin' his way. Didn't have to
move 'em.”

“Not at first;” she admitted; “but he had to move mountains later. How
far have you read?”

“One thing that helped him,” said Jethro, in indirect answer to this
question, “he got a smart woman for his wife--a smart woman.”

Cynthia looked down at the reins in her lap, and she felt again that
wicked stirring within her,--incredible stirring of minister's daughter
for tanner's son. Coniston believes, and always will believe, that the
social bars are strong enough. So Cynthia looked down at the reins.

“Poor Josephine!” she said, “I always wish he had not cast her off.”

“C-cast her off?” said Jethro. “Cast her off! Why did he do that?”

“After a while, when he got to be Emperor, he needed a wife who would
be more useful to him. Josephine had become a drag. He cared more about
getting on in the world than he did about his wife.”

Jethro looked away contemplatively.

“Wa-wahn't the woman to blame any?” he said.

“Read the book, and you'll see,” retorted Cynthia, flicking her horse,
which started at all gaits down the road. Jethro stood in his tracks,
staring, but this time he did not see her face above the hood of the
gig. Presently he trudged on, head downward, pondering upon another
problem than Napoleon's. Cynthia, at length, arrived in Brampton Street,
in a humor that puzzled the good Miss Lucretia sorely.




CHAPTER II

The sun had dropped behind the mountain, leaving Coniston in amethystine
shadow, and the last bee had flown homeward from the apple blossoms in
front of Aunt Lucy Prescott's window, before Cynthia returned. Aunt Lucy
was Cynthia's grandmother, and eighty-nine years of age. Still she sat
in her window beside the lilac bush, lost in memories of a stout, rosy
lass who had followed a stalwart husband up a broad river into the
wilderness some seventy years agone in Indian days--Weathersfield
Massacre days. That lass was Aunt Lucy herself, and in just such a May
had Timothy's axe rung through the Coniston forest and reared the log
cabin, where six of her children were born. Likewise in review passed
the lonely months when Timothy was fighting behind his rugged General
Stark for that privilege more desirable to his kind than life--self
government. Timothy Prescott would pull the forelock to no man, would
have such God-fearing persons as he chose make his laws for him.

Honest Captain Timothy and his Stark heroes, Aunt Lucy and her memories,
have long gone to rest. Little did they dream of the nation we have
lived to see, straining at her constitution like a great ship at anchor
in a gale, with funnels belching forth smoke, and a new race of men
thronging her decks for the mastery. Coniston is there still behind its
mountain, with its rusty firelocks and its hillside graves.

Cynthia, driving back from Brampton in the gig, smiled at Aunt Lucy
in the window, but she did not so much as glance at the tannery house
farther on. The tannery house, be it known, was the cottage where Jethro
dwelt, and which had belonged to Nathan, his father; and the tannery
sheds were at some distance behind it, nearer Coniston Water. Cynthia
did not glance at the tannery house, for a wave of orthodox indignation
had swept over her: at any rate, we may call it so. In other words,
she was angry with herself: pitied and scorned herself, if the truth be
told, for her actions--an inevitable mood.

In front of the minister's barn under the elms on the hill Cynthia
pulled the harness from the tired horse with an energy that betokened
activity of mind. She was not one who shrank from self-knowledge, and
the question put itself to her, “Whither was this matter tending?” The
fire that is in strong men has ever been a lure to women; and many,
meaning to play with it, have been burnt thereby since the world began.
But to turn the fire to some use, to make the world better for it or
stranger for it, that were an achievement indeed! The horse munching
his hay, Cynthia lingered as the light fainted above the ridge, with the
thought that this might be woman's province, and Miss Lucretia Penniman
might go on leading her women regiments to no avail. Nevertheless she
was angry with Jethro, not because of what he had said, but because of
what he was.

The next day is Sunday, and there is mild excitement in Coniston. For
Jethro Bass, still with the coonskin cap, but in a brass-buttoned
coat secretly purchased in Brampton, appeared at meeting! It made no
difference that he entered quietly, and sat in the rear slip, orthodox
Coniston knew that he was behind them: good Mr. Ware knew it, and
changed a little his prayers and sermon: Cynthia knew it, grew hot and
cold by turns under her poke bonnet. Was he not her brand, and would she
not get the credit of snatching him? How willingly, then, would she have
given up that credit to the many who coveted it--if it were a credit.
Was Jethro at meeting for any religious purpose?

Jethro's importance to Coniston lay in his soul, and that soul was
numbered at present ninety and ninth. When the meeting was over, Aunt
Lucy Prescott hobbled out at an amazing pace to advise him to read
chapter seven of Matthew, but he had vanished: via the horse sheds; if
she had known it, and along Coniston Water to the house by the tannery,
where he drew breath in a state of mind not to be depicted. He had gazed
at the back of Cynthia's poke bonnet for two hours, but he had an uneasy
feeling that he would have to pay a price.

The price was paid, in part, during the next six days. To do
Jethro's importance absolute justice, he did inspire fear among his
contemporaries, and young men and women did not say much to his face;
what they did say gave them little satisfaction. Grim Deacon Ira stopped
him as he was going to buy hides, and would have prayed over him if
Jethro had waited; dear Aunt Lucy did pray, but in private. In six days
orthodox Coniston came to the conclusion that this ninety and ninth soul
were better left to her who had snatched it, Cynthia Ware.

As for Cynthia, nothing was farther from her mind. Unchristian as was
the thought, if this thing she had awakened could only have been put
back to sleep again, she would have thought herself happy. But would
she have been happy? When Moses Hatch congratulated her, with more humor
than sincerity, he received the greatest scare of his life. Yet in those
days she welcomed Moses's society as she never had before; and Coniston,
including Moses himself, began thinking of a wedding.

Another Saturday came, and no Cynthia went to Brampton. Jethro may or
may not have been on the road. Sunday, and there was Jethro on the
back seat in the meetinghouse: Sunday noon, over his frugal dinner, the
minister mildly remonstrates with Cynthia for neglecting one who
has shown signs of grace, citing certain failures of others of his
congregation: Cynthia turns scarlet, leaving the minister puzzled and
a little uneasy: Monday, Miss Lucretia Penniman, alarmed, comes to
Coniston to inquire after Cynthia's health: Cynthia drives back with her
as far as Four Corners, talking literature and the advancement of woman;
returns on foot, thinking of something else, when she discerns a figure
seated on a log by the roadside, bent as in meditation. There was no
going back the thing to do was to come on, as unconcernedly as possible,
not noticing anything,--which Cynthia did, not without a little inward
palpitating and curiosity, for which she hated herself and looked the
sterner. The figure unfolded itself, like a Jack from a box.

“You say the woman wahn't any to blame--wahn't any to blame?”

The poke bonnet turned away. The shoulders under it began to shake, and
presently the astonished Jethro heard what seemed to be faint peals of
laughter. Suddenly she turned around to him, all trace of laughter gone.

“Why don't you read the book?”

“So I am,” said Jethro, “so I am. Hain't come to this casting-off yet.”

“And you didn't look ahead to find out?” This with scorn.

“Never heard of readin' a book in that fashion. I'll come to it in
time--g-guess it won't run away.”

Cynthia stared at him, perhaps with a new interest at this plodding
determination. She was not quite sure that she ought to stand talking
to him a third time in these woods, especially if the subject of
conversation were not, as Coniston thought, the salvation of his soul.
But she stayed. Here was a woman who could be dealt with by no known
rules, who did not even deign to notice a week of marked coldness.

“Jethro,” she said, with a terrifying sternness, “I am going to ask you
a question, and you must answer me truthfully.”

“G-guess I won't find any trouble about that,” said Jethro, apparently
not in the least terrified.

“I want you to tell me why you are going to meeting.”

“To see you,” said Jethro, promptly, “to see you.”

“Don't you know that that is wrong?”

“H-hadn't thought much about it,” answered Jethro.

“Well, you should think about it. People don't go to meeting to--to look
at other people.”

“Thought they did,” said Jethro. “W-why do they wear their best
clothes--why do they wear their best clothes?”

“To honor God,” said Cynthia, with a shade lacking in the conviction,
for she added hurriedly: “It isn't right for you to go to church to
see--anybody. You go there to hear the Scriptures expounded, and to
have your sins forgiven. Because I lent you that book, and you come to
meeting, people think I'm converting you.”

“So you be,” replied Jethro, and this time it was he who smiled, “so you
be.”

Cynthia turned away, her lips pressed together: How to deal with such a
man! Wondrous notes broke on the stillness, the thrush was singing
his hymn again, only now it seemed a paean. High in the azure a hawk
wheeled, and floated.

“Couldn't you see I was very angry with you?”

“S-saw you was goin' with Moses Hatch more than common.”

Cynthia drew breath sharply. This was audacity--and yet she liked it.

“I am very fond of Moses,” she said quickly.

“You always was charitable, Cynthy,” said he.

“Haven't I been charitable to you?” she retorted.

“G-guess it has be'n charity,” said Jethro. He looked down at her
solemnly, thoughtfully, no trace of anger in his face, turned, and
without another word strode off in the direction of Coniston Flat.

He left a tumultuous Cynthia, amazement and repentance struggling with
anger, which forbade her calling him back: pride in her answering to
pride in him, and she rejoicing fiercely that he had pride. Had he but
known it, every step he took away from her that evening was a step in
advance, and she gloried in the fact that he did not once look back. As
she walked toward Coniston, the thought came to her that she was rid of
the thing she had stirred up, perhaps forever, and the thrush burst into
his song once more.

That night, after Cynthia's candle had gone out, when the minister
sat on his doorsteps looking at the glory of the moon on the mountain
forest, he was startled by the sight of a figure slowly climbing toward
him up the slope. A second glance told him that it was Jethro's. Vaguely
troubled, he watched his approach; for good Priest Ware, while able
to obey one-half the scriptural injunction, had not the wisdom of the
serpent, and women, as typified by Cynthia, were a continual puzzle to
him. That very evening, Moses Hatch had called, had been received with
more favor than usual, and suddenly packed off about his business.
Seated in the moonlight, the minister wondered vaguely whether Jethro
Bass were troubling the girl. And now Jethro stood before him,
holding out a book. Rising, Mr. Ware bade him good evening, mildly and
cordially.

“C-come to leave this book for Cynthy,” said Jethro.

Mr. Ware took it, mechanically.

“Have you finished it?” he asked kindly.

“All I want,” replied Jethro, “all I want.”

He turned, and went down the slope. Twice the words rose to the
minister's lips to call him back, and were suppressed. Yet what to say
to him if he came? Mr. Ware sat down again, sadly wondering why Jethro
Bass should be so difficult to talk to.

The parsonage was of only one story, with a steep, sloping roof. On the
left of the doorway was Cynthia's room, and the minister imagined he
heard a faint, rustling noise at her window. Presently he arose, barred
the door; could be heard moving around in his room for a while,
and after that all was silence save for the mournful crying of a
whippoorwill in the woods. Then a door opened softly, a white vision
stole into the little entry lighted by the fan-window, above, seized
the book and stole back. Had the minister been a prying man about his
household, he would have noticed next day that Cynthia's candle was
burned down to the socket. He saw nothing of the kind: he saw, in fact,
that his daughter flitted about the house singing, and he went out into
the sun to drop potatoes.

No sooner had he reached the barn than this singing ceased. But how was
Mr. Ware to know that?

Twice Cynthia, during the week that followed, got halfway down the
slope of the parsonage hill, the book under her arm, on her way to the
tannery; twice went back, tears of humiliation and self-pity in her eyes
at the thought that she should make advances to a man, and that man
the tanner's son. Her household work done, a longing for further motion
seized her, and she walked out under the maples of the village street.
Let it be understood that Coniston was a village, by courtesy, and its
shaded road a street. Suddenly, there was the tannery, Jethro standing
in front of it, contemplative. Did he see her? Would he come to her?
Cynthia, seized by a panic of shame, flew into Aunt Lucy Prescott's, sat
through half an hour of torture while Aunt Lucy talked of redemption of
sinners, during ten minutes of which Jethro stood, still contemplative.
What tumult was in his breast, or whether there was any tumult, Cynthia
knew not. He went into the tannery again, and though she saw him twice
later in the week, he gave no sign of seeing her.

On Saturday Cynthia bought a new bonnet in Brampton; Sunday morning put
it on, suddenly remembered that one went to church to honor God, and
wore her old one; walked to meeting in a flutter of expectancy not to be
denied, and would have looked around had that not been a cardinal sin
in Coniston. No Jethro! General opinion (had she waited to hear it among
the horse sheds or on the green), that Jethro's soul had slid back into
the murky regions, from which it were folly for even Cynthia to try to
drag it.




CHAPTER III

To prove that Jethro's soul had not slid back into the murky regions,
and that it was still indulging in flights, it is necessary to follow
him (for a very short space) to Boston. Jethro himself went in Lyman
Hull's six-horse team with a load of his own merchandise--hides that he
had tanned, and other country produce. And they did not go by the way of
Truro Pass to the Capital, but took the state turnpike over the ranges,
where you can see for miles and miles and miles on a clear summer
day across the trembling floors of the forest tops to lonely sentinel
mountains fourscore miles away.

No one takes the state turnpike nowadays except crazy tourists who
are willing to risk their necks and their horses' legs for the sake of
scenery. The tough little Morgans of that time, which kept their feet
like cats, have all but disappeared, but there were places on that road
where Lyman Hull put the shoes under his wheels for four miles at a
stretch. He was not a companion many people would have chosen with whom
to enjoy the beauties of such a trip, and nearly everybody in Coniston
was afraid of him. Jethro Bass would sit silent on the seat for hours
and--it is a fact to be noted that when he told Lyman to do a thing,
Lyman did it; not, perhaps, without cursing and grumbling. Lyman was a
profane and wicked man--drover, farmer, trader, anything. He had a cider
mill on his farm on the south slopes of Coniston which Mr. Ware had
mentioned in his sermons, and which was the resort of the ungodly. The
cider was not so good as Squire Northcutt's, but cheaper. Jethro was not
afraid of Lyman, and he had a mortgage on the six-horse team, and on the
farm and the cider mill.

After six days, Jethro and Lyman drove over Charlestown bridge and
into the crooked streets of Boston, and at length arrived at a drover's
hotel, or lodging-house that did not, we may be sure, front on Mount
Vernon Street or face the Mall. Lyman proceeded to get drunk, and Jethro
to sell the hides and other merchandise which Lyman had hauled for him.

There was a young man in Boston, when Jethro arrived in Lyman Hull's
team, named William Wetherell. By extraordinary circumstances he and
another connected with him are to take no small part in this story,
which is a sufficient excuse for his introduction. His father had been
a prosperous Portsmouth merchant in the West India trade, a man of many
attainments, who had failed and died of a broken heart; and William, at
two and twenty, was a clerk in the little jewellery shop of Mr. Judson
in Cornhill.

William Wetherell had literary aspirations, and sat from morning till
night behind the counter, reading and dreaming: dreaming that he was to
be an Irving or a Walter Scott, and yet the sum total of his works in
after years consisted of some letters to the Newcastle Guardian, and a
beginning of the Town History of Coniston!

William had a contempt for the awkward young countryman who suddenly
loomed up before him that summer's morning across the counter. But a
moment before the clerk had been in a place where he would fain have
lingered--a city where blue waters flow swiftly between white palaces
toward the sunrise.

     “And I have fitted up some chambers there
     Looking toward the golden Eastern air,
     And level with the living winds, which flow
     Like waves above the living waves below.”

Little did William Wetherell guess, when he glanced up at the intruder,
that he was looking upon one of the forces of his own life! The
countryman wore a blue swallow tail coat (fashioned by the hand of
Speedy Bates), a neck-cloth, a coonskin cap, and his trousers were
tucked into rawhide boots. He did not seem a promising customer for
expensive jewellery, and the literary clerk did not rise, but merely
closed his book with his thumb in it.

“S-sell things here,” asked the countryman, “s-sell things here?”

“Occasionally, when folks have money to buy them.”

“My name's Jethro Bass,” said the countryman, “Jethro Bass from
Coniston. Ever hear of Coniston?”

Young Mr. Wetherell never had, but many years afterward he remembered
his name, heaven knows why. Jethro Bass! Perhaps it had a strange ring
to it.

“F-folks told me to be careful,” was Jethro's next remark. He did not
look at the clerk, but kept his eyes fixed on the things within the
counter.

“Somebody ought to have come with you,” said the clerk, with a smile of
superiority.

“D-don't know much about city ways.”

“Well,” said the clerk, beginning to be amused, “a man has to keep his
wits about him.”

Even then Jethro spared him a look, but continued to study the contents
of the case.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Bass? We have some really good things here.
For example, this Swiss watch, which I will sell you cheap, for one
hundred and fifty dollars.”

“One hundred and fifty dollars--er--one hundred and fifty?”

Wetherell nodded. Still the countryman did not look up.

“F-folks told me to be careful,” he repeated without a smile. He was
looking at the lockets, and finally pointed a large finger at one of
them--the most expensive, by the way. “W-what d'ye get for that?” he
asked.

“Twenty dollars,” the clerk promptly replied. Thirty was nearer the
price, but what did it matter.

“H-how much for that?” he said, pointing to another. The clerk told him.
He inquired about them all, deliberately repeating the sums, considering
with so well-feigned an air of a purchaser that Mr. Wetherell began to
take a real joy in the situation. For trade was slack in August, and
diversion scarce. Finally he commanded that the case be put on the top
of the counter, and Wetherell humored him. Whereupon he picked up the
locket he had first chosen. It looked very delicate in his huge, rough
hand, and Wetherell was surprised that the eyes of Mr. Bass had been
caught by the most expensive, for it was far from being the showiest.

“T-twenty dollars?” he asked.

“We may as well call it that,” laughed Wetherell.

“It's not too good for Cynthy,” he said.

“Nothing's too good for Cynthy,” answered Mr. Wetherell, mockingly,
little knowing how he might come to mean it.

Jethro Bass paid no attention to this speech. Pulling a great cowhide
wallet from his pocket, still holding the locket in his hand, to the
amazement of the clerk he counted out twenty dollars and laid them down.

“G-guess I'll take that one, g-guess I'll take that one,” he said.

Then he looked at Mr. Wetherell for the first time.

“Hold!” cried the clerk, more alarmed than he cared to show, “that's not
the price. Did you think I could sell it for that price?”

“W-wahn't that the price you fixed?”

“You simpleton!” retorted Wetherell, with a conviction now that he was
calling him the wrong name. “Give me back the locket, and you shall have
your money, again.”

“W-wahn't that the price you fixed?”

“Yes, but--”

“G-guess I'll keep the locket--g-guess I'll keep the locket.”

Wetherell looked at him aghast, and there was no doubt about his
determination. With a sinking heart the clerk realized that he should
have to make good to Mr. Judson the seven odd dollars of difference,
and then he lost his head. Slipping round the counter to the door of
the shop, he turned the key, thrust it in his pocket, and faced Mr. Bass
again--from behind the counter.

“You don't leave this shop,” cried the clerk, “until you give me back
that locket.”

Jethro Bass turned. A bench ran along the farther wall, and there he
planted himself without a word, while the clerk stared at him,--with
what feelings of uneasiness I shall not attempt to describe,--for the
customer was plainly determined to wait until hunger should drive one
of them forth. The minutes passed, and Wetherell began to hate him. Then
some one tried the door, peered in through the glass, perceived Jethro,
shook the knob, knocked violently, all to no purpose. Jethro seemed lost
in a reverie.

“This has gone far enough,” said the clerk, trying to keep his voice
from shaking “it is beyond a joke. Give me back the locket.” And he
tendered Jethro the money again.

“W-wahn't that the price you fixed?” asked Jethro, innocently.

Wetherell choked. The man outside shook the door again, and people on
the sidewalk stopped, and presently against the window panes a sea of
curious faces gazed in upon them. Mr. Bass's thoughts apparently were
fixed on Eternity--he looked neither at the people nor at Wetherell. And
then, the crowd parting as for one in authority, as in a bad dream
the clerk saw his employer, Mr. Judson, courteously pushing away the
customer at the door who would not be denied. Another moment, and Mr.
Judson had gained admittance with his private key, and stood on the
threshold staring at clerk and customer. Jethro gave no sign that the
situation had changed.

“William,” said Mr. Judson, in a dangerously quiet voice, “perhaps you
can explain this extraordinary state of affairs.”

“I can, sir,” William cried. “This gentleman” (the word stuck in his
throat), “this gentleman came in here to examine lockets which I had
no reason to believe he would buy. I admit my fault, sir. He asked the
price of the most expensive, and I told him twenty dollars, merely for a
jest, sir.” William hesitated.

“Well?” said Mr. Judson.

“After pricing every locket in the case, he seized the first one, handed
me twenty dollars, and now refuses to give it up, although he knows the
price is twenty-seven.”

“Then?”

“Then I locked the door, sir. He sat down there, and hasn't moved
since.”

Mr. Judson looked again at Mr. Bass; this time with unmistakable
interest. The other customer began to laugh, and the crowd was pressing
in, and Mr. Judson turned and shut the door in their faces. All this
time Mr. Bass had not moved, not so much as to lift his head or shift
one of his great cowhide boots.

“Well, sir,” demanded Mr. Judson, “what have you to say?”

“N-nothin'. G-guess I'll keep the locket. I've, paid for it--I've paid
for it.”

“And you are aware, my friend,” said Mr. Judson, “that my clerk has
given you the wrong price?”

“Guess that's his lookout.” He still sat there, doggedly unconcerned.

A bull would have seemed more at home in a china shop than Jethro
Bass in a jewellery store. But Mr. Judson himself was a man out of the
ordinary, and instead of getting angry he began to be more interested.

“Took you for a greenhorn, did he?” he remarked.

“F-folks told me to be careful--to be careful,” said Mr. Bass.

Then Mr. Judson laughed. It was all the more disconcerting to William
Wetherell, because his employer laughed rarely. He laid his hand on
Jethro's shoulder.

“He might have spared himself the trouble, my young friend,” he said.
“You didn't expect to find a greenhorn behind a jewellery counter, did
you?”

“S-surprised me some,” said Jethro.

Mr. Judson laughed again, all the while looking at him.

“I am going to let you keep the locket,” he said, “because it will teach
my greenhorn a lesson. William, do you hear that?”

“Yes, sir,” William said, and his face was very red.

Mr. Bass rose solemnly, apparently unmoved by his triumph in a somewhat
remarkable transaction, and William long remembered how he towered over
all of them. He held the locket out to Mr. Judson, who stared at it,
astonished.

“What's this?” said that gentleman; “you don't want it?”

“Guess I'll have it marked,” said Jethro, “ef it don't cost extry.”

“Marked!” gasped Mr. Judson, “marked!”

“Ef it don't cost extry,” Jethro repeated.

“Well, I'll--” exclaimed Mr. Judson, and suddenly recalled the fact that
he was a church member. “What inscription do you wish put into it?” he
asked, recovering himself with an effort.

Jethro thrust his hand into his pocket, and again the cowhide wallet
came out. He tendered Mr. Judson a somewhat soiled piece of paper, and
Mr. Judson read:--

        “Cynthy, from Jethro”

“Cynthy,” Mr. Judson repeated, in a tremulous voice, “Cynthy, not
Cynthia.”

“H-how is it written,” said Jethro, leaning over it, “h-how is it
written?”

“Cynthy,” answered Mr. Judson, involuntarily.

“Then make it Cynthy--make it Cynthy.”

“Cynthy it shall be,” said Mr. Judson, with conviction.

“When'll you have it done?”

“To-night,” replied Mr. Judson, with a twinkle in his eye, “to-night, as
a special favor.”

“What time--w-what time?”

“Seven o'clock, sir. May I send it to your hotel? The Tremont House, I
suppose?”

“I-I'll call,” said Jethro, so solemnly that Mr. Judson kept his
laughter until he was gone.

From the door they watched him silently as he strode across the street
and turned the corner. Then Mr. Judson turned. “That man will make his
mark, William,” he said; and added thoughtfully, “but whether for good
or evil, I know not.”




CHAPTER IV

What Cynthia may have thought or felt during Jethro's absence in Boston,
and for some months thereafter, she kept to herself. Honest Moses Hatch
pursued his courting untroubled, and never knew that he had a rival.
Moses would as soon have questioned the seasons or the weather as
Cynthia's changes of moods,--which were indeed the weather for him, and
when storms came he sat with his back to them, waiting for the sunshine.
He had long ceased proposing marriage, in the firm belief that Cynthia
would set the day in her own good time. Thereby he was saved much
suffering.

The summer flew on apace, for Coniston. Fragrant hay was cut on
hillsides won from rock and forest, and Coniston Water sang a gentler
melody--save when the clouds floated among the spruces on the mountain
and the rain beat on the shingles. During the still days before the turn
of the year,--days of bending fruit boughs, crab-apples glistening red
in the soft sunlight,--rumor came from Brampton to wrinkle the forehead
of Moses Hatch as he worked among his father's orchards.

The rumor was of a Mr. Isaac Dudley Worthington, a name destined to
make much rumor before it was to be carved on the marble. Isaac D.
Worthington, indeed, might by a stretch of the imagination be called the
pioneer of all the genus to be known in the future as City Folks, who
were, two generations later, to invade the country like a devouring army
of locusts.

At that time a stranger in Brampton was enough to set the town agog.
But a young man of three and twenty, with an independent income of four
hundred dollars a year!--or any income at all not derived from his own
labor--was unheard of. It is said that when the stage from over Truro
Gap arrived in Brampton Street a hundred eyes gazed at him unseen, from
various ambushes, and followed him up the walk to Silas Wheelock's,
where he was to board. In half an hour Brampton knew the essentials
of Isaac Worthington's story, and Sam Price was on his way with it to
Coniston for distribution at Jonah Winch's store.

Young Mr. Worthington was from Boston--no less; slim, pale, medium
height, but with an alert look, and a high-bridged nose. But his
clothes! Sam Price's vocabulary was insufficient here, they were cut
in such a way, and Mr. Worthington was downright distinguished-looking
under his gray beaver. Why had he come to Brampton? demanded Deacon
Ira Perkins. Sam had saved this for the last. Young Mr. Worthington was
threatened with consumption, and had been sent to live with his distant
relative, Silas Wheelock.

The presence of a gentleman of leisure--although threatened with
consumption--became an all-absorbing topic in two villages and three
hamlets, and more than one swain, hitherto successful, felt the wind
blow colder. But in a fortnight it was known that a petticoat did not
make Isaac Worthington even turn his head. Curiosity centred on Silas
Wheelock's barn, where Mr. Worthington had fitted up a shop, and,
presently various strange models of contrivances began to take shape
there. What these were, Silas himself knew not; and the gentleman of
leisure was, alas! close-mouthed. When he was not sawing and hammering
and planing, he took long walks up and down Coniston Water, and was
surprised deep in thought at several places.

Nathan Bass's story-and-a-half house, devoid of paint, faced the road,
and behind it was the shed, or barn, that served as the tannery, and
between the tannery and Coniston Water were the vats. The rain flew in
silvery spray, and the drops shone like jewels on the coat of a young
man who stood looking in at the tannery door. Young Jake Wheeler, son of
the village spendthrift, was driving a lean white horse round in a ring:
to the horse was attached a beam, and on the beam a huge round stone
rolled on a circular oak platform. Jethro Bass, who was engaged in
pushing hemlock bark under the stone to be crushed, straightened. Of the
three, the horse had seen the visitor first, and stopped in his tracks.

“Jethro!” whispered Jake, tingling with an excitement that was but
natural. Jethro had begun to sweep the finer pieces of bark toward the
centre. “It's the city man, walked up here from Brampton.”

It was indeed Mr. Worthington, slightly more sunburned and less
citified-looking than on his arrival, and he wore a woollen cap of
Brampton make. Even then, despite his wavy hair and delicate appearance,
Isaac Worthington had the hawk-like look which became famous in later
years, and at length he approached Jethro and fixed his eye upon him.

“Kind of slow work, isn't it?” remarked Mr. Worthington.

The white horse was the only one to break the silence that followed, by
sneezing with all his might.

“How is the tannery business in these parts?” essayed Mr. Worthington
again.

“Thinkin' of it?” said Jethro. “T-thinkin' of it, be you?”

“No,” answered Mr. Worthington, hastily. “If I were,” he added, “I'd put
in new machinery. That horse and stone is primitive.”

“What kind of machinery would you put in?” asked Jethro.

“Ah,” answered Worthington, “that will interest you. All New Englanders
are naturally progressive, I take it.”

“W-what was it you took?”

“I was merely remarking on the enterprise of New Englanders,” said
Worthington, flushing. “On my journey up here, beside the Merrimac, I
had the opportunity to inspect the new steam-boiler, the falling-mill,
the splitting machine, and other remarkable improvements. In fact, these
suggested one or two little things to me, which might be of interest to
you.”

“Well,” said Jethro, “they might, and then again they mightn't. Guess it
depends.”

“Depends!” exclaimed the man of leisure, “depends on what?”

“H-how much you know about it.”

Young Mr. Worthington, instead of being justly indignant, laughed and
settled himself comfortably on a pile of bark. He thought Jethro a
character, and he was not mistaken. On the other hand, Mr. Worthington
displayed a knowledge of the falling-mill and splitting-machine and the
process of tanneries in general that was surprising. Jethro, had Mr.
Worthington but known it, was more interested in animate machines: more
interested in Mr. Worthington than the falling-mill or, indeed, the
tannery business.

At length the visitor fell silent, his sense of superiority suddenly
gone. Others had had this same feeling with Jethro, even the minister;
but the man of leisure (who was nothing of the sort) merely felt a kind
of bewilderment.

“Callatin' to live in Brampton--be you?” asked Jethro.

“I am living there now.”

“C-callatin' to set up a mill some day?”

Mr. Worthington fairly leaped off the bark pile.

“What makes you say that?” he demanded.

“G-guesswork,” said Jethro, starting to shovel again, “g-guesswork.”

To take a walk in the wild, to come upon a bumpkin in cowhide boots
crushing bark, to have him read within twenty minutes a cherished and
well-hidden ambition which Brampton had not discovered in a month (and
did not discover for many years) was sufficiently startling. Well might
Mr. Worthington tremble for his other ambitions, and they were many.

Jethro stepped out, passing Mr. Worthington as though he had already
forgotten that gentleman's existence, and seized an armful of bark that
lay under cover of a lean-to. Just then, heralded by a brightening of
the western sky, a girl appeared down the road, her head bent a little
as in thought, and if she saw the group by the tannery house she gave
no sign. Two of them stared at her--Jake Wheeler and Mr. Worthington.
Suddenly Jake, implike, turned and stared at Worthington.

“Cynthy Ware, the minister's daughter,” he said.

“Haven't I seen her in Brampton?” inquired Mr. Worthington, little
thinking of the consequences of the question.

“Guess you have,” answered Jake. “Cynthy goes to the Social Library, to
git books. She knows more'n the minister himself, a sight more.”

“Where does the minister live?” asked Mr. Worthington.

Jake pulled him by the sleeve toward the road, and pointed to the low
gable of the little parsonage under the elms on the hill beyond the
meeting-house. The visitor gave a short glance at it, swung around and
gave a longer glance at the figure disappearing in the other direction.
He did not suspect that Jake was what is now called a news agency. Then
Mr. Worthington turned to Jethro, who was stooping over the bark.

“If you come to Brampton, call and see me,” he said. “You'll find me at
Silas Wheelock's.”

He got no answer, but apparently expected none, and he started off down
the Brampton road in the direction Cynthia had taken.

“That makes another,” said Jake, significantly, “and Speedy Bates says
he never looks at wimmen. Godfrey, I wish I could see Moses now.”

Mr. Worthington had not been quite ingenuous with Jake. To tell the
truth, he had made the acquaintance of the Social Library and Miss
Lucretia, and that lady had sung the praises of her favorite. Once out
of sight of Jethro, Mr. Worthington quickened his steps, passed the
store, where he was remarked by two of Jonah's customers, and his blood
leaped when he saw the girl in front of him, walking faster now. Yes,
it is a fact that Isaac Worthington's blood once leaped. He kept on, but
when near her had a spasm of fright to make his teeth fairly chatter,
and than another spasm followed, for Cynthia had turned around.

“How do you do Mr. Worthington?” she said, dropping him a little
courtesy. Mr. Worthington stopped in his tracks, and it was some time
before he remembered to take off his woollen cap and sweep the mud with
it.

“You know my name!” he exclaimed.

“It is known from Tarleton Four Corners to Harwich,” said Cynthia, “all
that distance. To tell the truth,” she added, “those are the boundaries
of my world.” And Mr. Worthington being still silent, “How do you like
being a big frog in a little pond?”

“If it were your pond, Miss Cynthia,” he responded gallantly, “I should
be content to be a little frog.”

“Would you?” she said; “I don't believe you.”

This was not subtle flattery, but the truth--Mr. Worthington would never
be content to be a little anything. So he had been judged twice in an
afternoon, once by Jethro and again by Cynthia.

“Why don't you believe me?” he asked ecstatically.

“A woman's instinct, Mr. Worthington, has very little reason in it.”

“I hear, Miss Cynthia,” he said gallantly, “that your instinct is
fortified by learning, since Miss Penniman tells me that you are quite
capable of taking a school in Boston.”

“Then I should be doubly sure of your character,” she retorted with a
twinkle.

“Will you tell my fortune?” he said gayly.

“Not on such a slight acquaintance,” she replied. “Good-by, Mr.
Worthington.”

“I shall see you in Brampton,” he cried, “I--I have seen you in
Brampton.”

She did not answer this confession, but left him, and presently
disappeared beyond the triangle of the green, while Mr. Worthington
pursued his way to Brampton by the road,--his thoughts that evening not
on waterfalls or machinery. As for Cynthia's conduct, I do not defend or
explain it, for I have found out that the best and wisest of women can
at times be coquettish.

It was that meeting which shook the serenity of poor Moses, and he
learned of it when he went to Jonah Winch's store an hour later. An
hour later, indeed, Coniston was discussing the man of leisure in a
new light. It was possible that Cynthia might take him, and Deacon Ira
Perkins made a note the next time he went to Brampton to question Silas
Wheelock on Mr. Worthington's origin, habits, and orthodoxy.

Cynthia troubled herself very little about any of these. Scarcely any
purpose in the world is single, but she had had a purpose in talking
to Mr. Worthington, besides the pleasure it gave her. And the next
Saturday, when she rode off to Brampton, some one looked through the
cracks in the tannery shed and saw that she wore her new bonnet.

There is scarcely a pleasanter place in the world than Brampton Street
on a summer's day. Down the length of it runs a wide green, shaded by
spreading trees, and on either side, tree-shaded, too, and each in its
own little plot, gabled houses of that simple, graceful architecture of
our forefathers. Some of these had fluted pilasters and cornices, the
envy of many a modern architect, and fan-shaped windows in dormer and
doorway. And there was the church, then new, that still stands to the
glory of its builders; with terraced steeple and pillared porch and the
widest of checker-paned sashes to let in the light on high-backed pews
and gallery.

The celebrated Social Library, halfway up the street, occupied part of
Miss Lucretia's little house; or, it might better be said, Miss Lucretia
boarded with the Social Library. There Cynthia hitched her horse, gave
greeting to Mr. Ezra Graves and others who paused, and, before she was
fairly in the door, was clasped in Miss Lucretia's arms. There were new
books to be discussed, arrived by the stage the day before; but scarce
half an hour had passed before Cynthia started guiltily at a timid
knock, and Miss Lucretia rose briskly.

“It must be Ezra Graves come for the Gibbon,” she said. “He's early.”
 And she went to the door. Cynthia thought it was not Ezra. Then came
Miss Lucretia's voice from the entry:--

“Why, Mr. Worthington! Have you read the Last of the Mohicans already?”

There he stood, indeed, the man of leisure, and to-day he wore his
beaver hat. No, he had not yet read the 'Last of the Mohicans.' There
were things in it that Mr. Worthington would like to discuss with Miss
Penniman. Was it not a social library? At this juncture there came a
giggle from within that made him turn scarlet, and he scarcely heard
Miss Lucretia offering to discuss the whole range of letters. Enter Mr.
Worthington, bows profoundly to Miss Lucretia's guest, his beaver in his
hand, and the discussion begins, Cynthia taking no part in it. Strangely
enough, Mr. Worthington's remarks on American Indians are not only
intelligent, but interesting. The clock strikes four, Miss Lucretia
starts up, suddenly remembering that she has promised to read to an
invalid, and with many regrets from Mr. Worthington, she departs. Then
he sits down again, twirling his beaver, while Cynthia looks at him in
quiet amusement.

“I shall walk to Coniston again, next week,” he announced.

“What an energetic man!” said Cynthia.

“I want to have my fortune told.”

“I hear that you walk a great deal,” she remarked, “up and down Coniston
Water. I shall begin to think you romantic, Mr. Worthington--perhaps a
poet.”

“I don't walk up and down Coniston Water for that reason,” he answered
earnestly.

“Might I be so bold as to ask the reason?” she ventured.

Great men have their weaknesses. And many, close-mouthed with their own
sex, will tell their cherished hopes to a woman, if their interests
are engaged. With a bas-relief of Isaac Worthington in the town library
to-day (his own library), and a full-length portrait of him in the
capitol of the state, who shall deny this title to greatness?

He leaned a little toward her, his face illumined by his subject, which
was himself.

“I will confide in you,” he said, “that some day I shall build here in
Brampton a woollen mill which will be the best of its kind. If I gain
money, it will not be to hoard it or to waste it. I shall try to make
the town better for it, and the state, and I shall try to elevate my
neighbors.”

Cynthia could not deny that these were laudable ambitions.

“Something tells me,” he continued, “that I shall succeed. And that is
why I walk on Coniston Water--to choose the best site for a dam.”

“I am honored by your secret, but I feel that the responsibility you
repose in me is too great,” she said.

“I can think of none in whom I would rather confide,” said he.

“And am I the only one in all Brampton, Harwich, and Coniston who knows
this?” she asked.

Mr. Worthington laughed.

“The only one of importance,” he answered. “This week, when I went to
Coniston, I had a strange experience. I left the brook at a tannery, and
a most singular fellow was in the shed shovelling bark. I tried to get
him to talk, and told him about some new tanning machinery I had seen.
Suddenly he turned on me and asked me if I was 'callatin' to set up a
mill.' He gave me a queer feeling. Do you have many such odd characters
in Coniston, Miss Cynthia? You're not going?”

Cynthia had risen, and all of the laugher was gone from her eyes. What
had happened to make her grow suddenly grave, Isaac Worthington never
knew.

“I have to get my father's supper,” she said.

He, too, rose, puzzled and disconcerted at this change in her.

“And may I not come to Coniston?” he asked.

“My father and I should be glad to see you, Mr. Worthington,” she
answered.

He untied her horse and essayed one more topic.

“You are taking a very big book,” he said. “May I look at the title?”

She showed it to him in silence. It was the “Life of Napoleon
Bonaparte.”




CHAPTER V

Isaac Worthington came to Coniston not once, but many times, before the
snow fell; and afterward, too, in Silas Wheelock's yellow sleigh through
the great drifts under the pines, the chestnut Morgan trotting to one
side in the tracks. On one of these excursions he fell in with that
singular character of a bumpkin who had interested him on his first
visit, in coonskin cap and overcoat and mittens. Jethro Bass was
plodding in the same direction, and Isaac Worthington, out of the
goodness of his heart, invited him into the sleigh. He was scarcely
prepared for the bumpkin's curt refusal, but put it down to native
boorishness, and thought no more about it then.

What troubled Mr. Worthington infinitely more was the progress of his
suit; for it had become a snit, though progress is a wrong word to use
in connection with it. So far had he got,--not a great distance,--and
then came to what he at length discovered was a wall, and apparently
impenetrable. He was not even allowed to look over it. Cynthia was kind,
engaging; even mirthful, at times, save when he approached it; and he
became convinced that a certain sorrow lay in the forbidden ground. The
nearest he had come to it was when he mentioned again, by accident, that
life of Napoleon.

That Cynthia would accept him, nobody doubted for an instant. It would
be madness not to. He was orthodox, so Deacon Ira had discovered, of
good habits, and there was the princely four hundred a year--almost
a minister's salary! Little people guessed that there was no
love-making--only endless discussions of books beside the great centre
chimney, and discussions of Isaac Worthington's career.

It is a fact--for future consideration--that Isaac Worthington proposed
to Cynthia Ware, although neither Speedy Bates nor Deacon Ira Perkins
heard him do so. It had been very carefully prepared, that speech,
and was a model of proposals for the rising young men of all time. Mr.
Worthington preferred to offer himself for what he was going to be--not
for what he was. He tendered to Cynthia a note for a large amount,
payable in some twenty years, with interest. The astonishing thing to
record is that in twenty years he could have more than paid the note,
although he could not have foreseen at that time the Worthington Free
Library and the Truro Railroad, and the stained-glass window in the
church and the great marble monument on the hill--to another woman.
All of these things, and more, Cynthia might have had if she had only
accepted that promise to pay! But she did not accept it. He was a trifle
more robust than when he came to Brampton in the summer, but perhaps she
doubted his promise to pay.

It may have been guessed, although the language we have used has been
purposely delicate, that Cynthia was already in love with--somebody
else. Shame of shames and horror of horrors--with Jethro Bass! With
Strength, in the crudest form in which it is created, perhaps, but yet
with Strength. The strength might gradually and eventually be refined.
Such was her hope, when she had any. It is hard, looking back upon that
virginal and cultured Cynthia, to be convinced that she could have loved
passionately, and such a man! But love she did, and passionately, too,
and hated herself for it, and prayed and struggled to cast out what she
believed, at times, to be a devil.

The ancient allegory of Cupid and the arrows has never been improved
upon: of Cupid, who should never in the world have been trusted with a
weapon, who defies all game laws, who shoots people in the bushes and
innocent bystanders generally, the weak and the helpless and the strong
and self-confident! There is no more reason in it than that. He shot
Cynthia Ware, and what she suffered in secret Coniston never guessed.
What parallels in history shall I quote to bring home the enormity of
such a mesalliance? Orthodox Coniston would have gone into sackcloth and
ashes,--was soon to go into these, anyway.

I am not trying to keep the lovers apart for any mere purposes of
fiction,--this is a true chronicle, and they stayed apart most of
that winter. Jethro went about his daily tasks, which were now become
manifold, and he wore the locket on its little chain himself. He did not
think that Cynthia loved him--yet, but he had the effrontery to believe
that she might, some day; and he was content to wait. He saw that she
avoided him, and he was too proud to go to the parsonage and so incur
ridicule and contempt.

Jethro was content to wait. That is a clew to his character throughout
his life. He would wait for his love, he would wait for his hate: he had
waited ten years before putting into practice the first step of a little
scheme which he had been gradually developing during that time, for
which he had been amassing money, and the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, by
the way, had given him some valuable ideas. Jethro, as well as Isaac
D. Worthington, had ambitions, although no one in Coniston had hitherto
guessed them except Jock Hallowell--and Cynthia Ware, after her
curiosity had been aroused.

Even as Isaac D. Worthington did not dream of the Truro Railroad and of
an era in the haze of futurity, it did not occur to Jethro Bass that his
ambitions tended to the making of another era that was at hand. Makers
of eras are too busy thinking about themselves and like immediate
matters to worry about history. Jethro never heard the expression
about “cracks in the Constitution,” and would not have known what it
meant,--he merely had the desire to get on top. But with Established
Church Coniston tight in the saddle (in the person of Moses Hatch,
Senior), how was he to do it?

As the winter wore on, and March town meeting approached, strange rumors
of a Democratic ticket began to drift into Jonah Winch's store,--a
Democratic ticket headed by Fletcher Bartlett, of all men, as chairman
of the board. Moses laughed when he first heard of it, for Fletcher was
an easy-going farmer of the Methodist persuasion who was always in debt,
and the other members of the ticket, so far as Moses could learn of
it--were remarkable neither for orthodoxy or solidity. The rumors
persisted, and still Moses laughed, for the senior selectman was a big
man with flesh on him, who could laugh with dignity.

“Moses,” said Deacon Lysander Richardson as they stood on the platform
of the store one sunny Saturday in February, “somebody's put Fletcher
up to this. He hain't got sense enough to act that independent all by
himself.”

“You be always croakin', Lysander,” answered Moses.

Cynthia Ware, who had come to the store for buttons for Speedy Bates,
who was making a new coat for the minister, heard these remarks, and
stood thoughtfully staring at the blue coat-tails of the elders. A brass
button was gone from Deacon Lysander's, and she wanted to sew it on.
Suddenly she looked up, and saw Jock Hallowell standing beside her. Jock
winked--and Cynthia blushed and hurried homeward without a word. She
remembered, vividly enough, what Jack had told her the spring before,
and several times during the week that followed she thought of waylaying
him and asking what he knew. But she could not summon the courage. As a
matter of fact, Jock knew nothing, but he had a theory. He was a strange
man, Jock, who whistled all day on roof and steeple and meddled with
nobody's business, as a rule. What had impelled him to talk to Cynthia
in the way he had must remain a mystery.

Meanwhile the disquieting rumors continued to come in. Jabez Miller, on
the north slope, had told Samuel Todd, who told Ephraim Williams, that
he was going to vote for Fletcher. Moses Hatch hitched up his team and
went out to see Jabez, spent an hour in general conversation, and then
plumped the question, taking, as he said, that means of finding out.
Jabez hemmed and hawed, said his farm was mortgaged; spoke at some
length about the American citizen, however humble, having a right to
vote as he chose. A most unusual line for Jabez, and the whole matter
very mysterious and not a little ominous. Moses drove homeward that
sparkling day, shutting his eyes to the glare of the ice crystals on
the pines, and thinking profoundly. He made other excursions, enough to
satisfy himself that this disease, so new and unheard of (the right of
the unfit to hold office), actually existed. Where the germ began that
caused it, Moses knew no better than the deacon, since those who were
suspected of leanings toward Fletcher Bartlett were strangely secretive.
The practical result of Moses' profound thought was a meeting, in his
own house, without respect to party, Democrats and Whigs alike, opened
by a prayer from the minister himself. The meeting, after a futile
session, broke up dismally. Sedition and conspiracy existed; a chief
offender and master mind there was, somewhere. But who was he?

Good Mr. Ware went home, troubled in spirit, shaking his head. He had a
cold, and was not so strong as he used to be, and should not have gone
to the meeting at all. At supper, Cynthia listened with her eyes on her
plate while he told her of the affair.

“Somebody's behind this, Cynthia,” he said. “It's the most astonishing
thing in my experience that we cannot discover who has incited them. All
the unattached people in the town seem to have been organized.” Mr.
Ware was wont to speak with moderation even at his own table. He said
unattached--not ungodly.

Cynthia kept her eyes on her plate, but she felt as though her body
were afire. Little did the minister imagine, as he went off to write his
sermon, that his daughter might have given him the clew to the mystery.
Yes, Cynthia guessed; and she could not read that evening because of
the tumult of her thoughts. What was her duty in the matter? To tell
her father her suspicions? They were only suspicions, after all, and she
could make no accusations. And Jethro! Although she condemned him, there
was something in the situation that appealed to a most reprehensible
sense of humor. Cynthia caught herself smiling once or twice, and knew
that it was wicked. She excused Jethro, and told herself that, with his
lack of training, he could know no better. Then an idea came to her, and
the very boldness of it made her grow hot again. She would appeal to him
tell him that that power he had over other men could be put to better
and finer uses. She would appeal to him, and he would abandon the
matter. That the man loved her with the whole of his rude strength she
was sure, and that knowledge had been the only salve to her shame.

So far we have only suspicions ourselves; and, strange to relate, if we
go around Coniston with Jethro behind his little red Morgan, we shall
come back with nothing but--suspicions. They will amount to convictions,
yet we cannot prove them. The reader very naturally demands some
specific information--how did Jethro do it? I confess that I can only
indicate in a very general way: I can prove nothing. Nobody ever could
prove anything against Jethro Bass. Bring the following evidence before
any grand jury in the country, and see if they don't throw it out of
court.

Jethro in the course of his weekly round of strictly business visits
throughout the town, drives into Samuel Todd's farmyard, and hitches
on the sunny side of the red barns. The town of Coniston, it must be
explained for the benefit of those who do not understand the word “town”
 in the New England senses was a tract of country about ten miles by ten,
the most thickly settled portion of which was the village of Coniston,
consisting of twelve houses. Jethro drives into the barnyard, and Samuel
Todd comes out. He is a little man, and has a habit of rubbing the sharp
ridge of his nose.

“How be you, Jethro?” says Samuel. “Killed the brindle Thursday. Finest
hide you ever seed.”

“G-goin' to town meetin' Tuesday--g-goin' to town meetin'
Tuesday--Sam'l?” says Jethro.

“I was callatin' to, Jethro.”

“Democrat--hain't ye--Democrat?”

“Callate to be.”

“How much store do ye set by that hide?”

Samuel rubs his nose. Then he names a price that the hide might fetch,
under favorable circumstances, in Boston--Jethro does not wince.

“Who d'ye callate to vote for, Sam'l?”

Samuel rubs his nose.

“Heerd they was a-goin' to put up Fletcher and Amos Cuthbert, an'
Sam Price for Moderator.” (What a convenient word is they when used
politically!) “Hain't made up my mind, clear,” says Samuel.

“C-comin' by the tannery after town meetin'?” inquired Jethro, casually.

“Don't know but what I kin.”

“F-fetch the hide--f-fetch the hide.”

And Jethro drives off, with Samuel looking after him, rubbing his nose.
“No bill,” says the jury--if you can get Samuel into court. But you
can't. Even Moses Hatch can get nothing out of Samuel, who then talks
Jacksonian principles and the nights of an American citizen.

Let us pursue this matter a little farther, and form a committee of
investigation. Where did Mr. Todd learn anything about Jacksonian
principles? From Mr. Samuel Price, whom they have spoken of for
Moderator. And where did Mr. Price learn of these principles? Any one in
Coniston will tell you that Mr. Price makes a specialty of orators and
oratory; and will hold forth at the drop of a hat in Jonah Winch's store
or anywhere else. Who is Mr. Price? He is a tall, sallow young man of
eight and twenty, with a wedge-shaped face, a bachelor and a Methodist,
who farms in a small way on the southern slope, and saves his money. He
has become almost insupportable since they have named him for Moderator.

Get Mr. Sam Price into court. Here is a man who assuredly knows who they
are: if we are, not much mistaken, he is their mouthpiece. Get, an eel
into court. There is only one man in town who can hold an eel, and he
isn't on the jury. Mr. Price will talk plentifully, in his nasal way;
but he won't tell you anything.

Mr. Price has been nominated to fill Deacon Lysander Richardson's shoes
in the following manner: One day in the late autumn a man in a coonskin
cap stops beside Mr. Price's woodpile, where Mr. Price has been chopping
wood, pausing occasionally to stare off through the purple haze at the
south shoulder of Coniston Mountain.

“How be you, Jethro?” says Mr. Price, nasally.

“D-Democrats are talkin' some of namin' you Moderator next meetin',”
 says the man in the coonskin cap.

“Want to know!” ejaculates Mr. Price, dropping the axe and straightening
up in amazement. For Mr. Price's ambition soared no higher, and he had
made no secret of it. “Wal! Whar'd you hear that, Jethro?”

“H-heerd it round--some. D-Democrat--hain't you--Democrat?”

“Always callate to be.”

“J-Jacksonian Democrat?”

“Guess I be.”

Silence for a while, that Mr. Price may feel the gavel in his hand,
which he does.

“Know somewhat about Jacksonian principles, don't ye--know somewhat?”

“Callate to,” says Mr. Price, proudly.

“T-talk 'em up, Sam--t-talk 'em up. C-canvass, Sam.”

With these words of brotherly advice Mr. Bass went off down the road,
and Mr. Price chopped no more wood that night; but repeated to himself
many times in his nasal voice, “I want to know!” In the course of the
next few weeks various gentlemen mentioned to Mr. Price that he had been
spoken of for Moderator, and he became acquainted with the names of
the other candidates on the same mysterious ticket who were mentioned.
Whereupon he girded up his loins and went forth and preached the word of
Jacksonian Democracy in all the farmhouses roundabout, with such effect
that Samuel Todd and others were able to talk with some fluency about
the rights of American citizens.

Question before the Committee, undisposed of: Who nominated Samuel Price
for Moderator? Samuel Price gives the evidence, tells the court he does
not know, and is duly cautioned and excused.

Let us call, next, Mr. Eben Williams, if we can. Moses Hatch, Senior,
has already interrogated him with all the authority of the law and the
church, for Mr. Williams is orthodox, though the deacons have to remind
him of his duty once in a while. Eben is timid, and replies to us, as
to Moses, that he has heard of the Democratic ticket, and callates that
Fletcher Bartlett, who has always been the leader of the Democratic
party, has named the ticket. He did not mention Jethro Bass to Deacon
Hatch. Why should he? What has Jethro Bass got to do with politics?

Eben lives on a southern spur, next to Amos Cuthbert, where you can look
off for forty miles across the billowy mountains of the west. From
no spot in Coniston town is the sunset so fine on distant Farewell
Mountain, and Eben's sheep feed on pastures where only mountain-bred
sheep can cling and thrive. Coniston, be it known, at this time is one
of the famous wool towns of New England: before the industry went West,
with other industries. But Eben Williams's sheep do not wholly belong to
him they are mortgaged--and Eben's farm is mortgaged.

Jethro Bass--Eben testifies to us--is in the habit of visiting him once
a month, perhaps, when he goes to Amos Cuthbert's. Just friendly calls.
Is it not a fact that Jethro Bass holds his mortgage? Yes, for eight
hundred dollars. How long has he held that mortgage? About a year and a
half. Has the interest been paid promptly? Well, the fact is that Eben
hasn't paid any interest yet.

Now let us take the concrete incident. Before that hypocritical thaw
early in February, Jethro called upon Amos Cuthbert--not so surly then
as he has since become--and talked about buying his wool when it should
be duly cut, and permitted Amos to talk about the position of second
selectman, for which some person or persons unknown to the jury had
nominated him. On his way down to the Four Corners, Jethro had merely
pulled up his sleigh before Eben Williams's house, which stood behind a
huge snow bank and practically on the road. Eben appeared at the door, a
little dishevelled in hair and beard, for he had been sleeping.

“How be you, Jethro?” he said nervously. Jethro nodded.

“Weather looks a mite soft.”

No answer.

“About that interest,” said Eben, plunging into the dread subject,
“don't know as I'm ready this month after all.”

“G-goin' to town meetin', Eben?”

“Wahn't callatin' to,” answered Eben.

“G-goin' to town meetin', Eben?”

Eben, puzzled and dismayed, ran his hand through his hair.

“Wahn't callatin' to--but I kin--I kin.”

“D-Democrat--hain't ye--D-Democrat?”

“I kin be,” said Eben. Then he looked at Jethro and added in a startled
voice, “Don't know but what I be--Yes, I guess I be.”

“H-heerd the ticket?”

Yes, Eben had heard the ticket. What man had not. Some one has been most
industrious, and most disinterested, in distributing that ticket.

“Hain't a mite of hurry about the interest right now--right now,” said
Jethro. “M-may be along the third week in March--may be--c-can t tell.”

And Jethro clucked to his horse, and drove away. Eben Williams went back
into his house and sat down with his head in his hands. In about two
hours, when his wife called him to fetch water, he set down the pail
on the snow and stared across the next ridge at the eastern horizon,
whitening after the sunset.

The third week in March was the week after town meeting!

“M-may be--c-can't tell,” repeated Eben to himself, unconsciously
imitating Jethro's stutter. “Godfrey, I'll hev to git that ticket
straight from Amos.”

Yes, we may have our suspicions. But how can we get a bill on this
evidence? There are some thirty other individuals in Coniston whose
mortgages Jethro holds, from a horse to a house and farm. It is not
likely that they will tell Beacon Hatch, or us; that they are going to
town meeting and vote for that fatherless ticket because Jethro Bass
wishes them to do so. And Jethro has never said that he wishes them
to. If so, where are your witnesses? Have we not come back to our
starting-point, even as Moses Hatch drove around in a circle.. And we
have the advantage over Moses, for we suspect somebody, and he did not
know whom to suspect. Certainly not Jethro Bass, the man that lived
under his nose and never said anything--and had no right to. Jethro
Bass had never taken any active part in politics, though some folks had
heard, in his rounds on business, that he had discussed them, and had
spread the news of the infamous ticket without a parent. So much was
spoken of at the meeting over which Priest Ware prayed. It was even
declared that, being a Democrat, Jethro might have influenced some of
those under obligations to him. Sam Price was at last fixed upon as the
malefactor, though people agreed that they had not given him credit for
so much sense, and Jacksonian principles became as much abhorred by the
orthodox as the spotted fever.

We can call a host of other witnesses if we like, among them cranky,
happy-go-lucky Fletcher Bartlett, who has led forlorn hopes in former
years. Court proceedings make tiresome reading, and if those who
have been over ours have not arrived at some notion of the simple and
innocent method of the new Era of politics note dawning--they never
will. Nothing proved. But here is part of the ticket which nobody
started:--

     For

     SENIOR SELECTMAN, FLETCHER BARTLETT.

     (Farm and buildings on Thousand Acre Hill mortgaged to Jethro
     Bass.)

     SECOND SELECTMAN, AMOS CUTHBERT.

     (Farm and buildings on Town's End Ridge mortgaged to Jethro
     Bass.)

     THIRD SELECTMAN, CHESTER PERKINS.

     (Sop of some kind to the Established Church party. Horse and
     cow mortgaged to Jethro Bass, though his father, the tithing-man,
doesn't know it.)

     MODERATOR, SAMUEL PRICE.

     (Natural ambition--dove of oratory and Jacksonian principles.)

     etc., etc.

The notes are mine, not Moses's. Strange that they didn't occur to
Moses. What a wealthy man has our hero become at thirty-one! Jethro Bass
was rich beyond the dreams of avarice--for Coniston. Truth compels me
to admit that the sum total of all his mortgages did not amount to nine
thousand “dollars”; but that was a large sum of money for Coniston in
those days, and even now. Nathan Bass had been a saving man, and had
left to his son one-half of this fortune. If thrift and the ability to
gain wealth be qualities for a hero, Jethro had them--in those days.

The Sunday before March meeting, it blew bitter cold, and Priest Ware,
preaching in mittens, denounced sedition in general. Underneath him,
on the first landing of the high pulpit, the deacons sat with knitted
brows, and the key-note from Isaiah Prescott's pitch pipe sounded like
mournful echo of the mournful wind without.

Monday was ushered in with that sleet storm to which the almanacs still
refer, and another scarcely less important event occurred that day which
we shall have to pass by for the present; on Tuesday, the sleet still
raging, came the historic town meeting. Deacon Moses Hatch, his chores
done and his breakfast and prayers completed, fought his way with his
head down through a white waste to the meeting-house door, and unlocked
it, and shivered as he made the fire. It was certainly not good election
weather, thought Moses, and others of the orthodox persuasion, high in
office, were of the same opinion as they stood with parted coat tails
before the stove. Whoever had stirred up and organized the hordes,
whoever was the author of that ticket of the discontented, had not
counted upon the sleet. Heaven-sent sleet, said Deacon Ira Perkins, and
would not speak to his son Chester, who sat down just then in one of the
rear slips. Chester had become an agitator, a Jacksonian Democrat, and
an outcast, to be prayed for but not spoken to.

We shall leave them their peace of mind for half an hour more,
those stanch old deacons and selectmen, who did their duty by their
fellow-citizens as they saw it and took no man's bidding. They could not
see the trackless roads over the hills, now becoming tracked, and the
bent figures driving doggedly against the storm, each impelled by a
motive: each motive strengthened by a master mind until it had become
imperative. Some, like Eben Williams behind his rickety horse, came
through fear; others through ambition; others were actuated by both;
and still others were stung by the pain of the sleet to a still greater
jealousy and envy, and the remembrance of those who had been in power. I
must not omit the conscientious Jacksonians who were misguided enough to
believe in such a ticket.

The sheds were not large enough to hold the teams that day. Jethro's
barn and tannery were full, and many other barns in the village. And
now the peace of mind of the orthodox is a thing of the past. Deacon
Lysander Richardson, the moderator, sits aghast in his high place as
they come trooping in, men who have not been to town meeting for ten
years. Deacon Lysander, with his white band of whiskers that goes around
his neck like a sixteenth-century ruff under his chin, will soon be a
memory. Now enters one, if Deacon Lysander had known it symbolic of the
new Era. One who, though his large head is bent, towers over most of
the men who make way for him in the aisle, nodding but not speaking,
and takes his place in the chair under the platform on the right of the
meeting-pause under one of the high, three-part windows. That chair
was always his in future years, and there he sat afterward, silent,
apparently taking no part. But not a man dropped a ballot into the box
whom Jethro Bass did not see and mark.

And now, when the meeting-house is crowded as it has never been before,
when Jonah Winch has arranged his dinner booth in the corner, Deacon
Lysander raps for order and the minister prays. They proceed, first,
to elect a representative to the General Court. The Jacksonians do not
contest that seat,--this year,--and Isaiah Prescott, fourteenth child
of Timothy, the Stark hero, father of a young Ephraim whom we shall hear
from later, is elected. And now! Now for a sensation, now for disorder
and misrule!

“Gentlemen,” says Deacon Lysander, “you will prepare your ballots for
the choice of the first Selectman.”

The Whigs have theirs written out, Deacon Moses Hatch. But who has
written out these others that are being so assiduously passed around?
Sam Price, perhaps, for he is passing them most assiduously. And what
name is written on them? Fletcher Bartlett, of course; that was on the
ticket. Somebody is tricked again. That is not the name on the ticket.
Look over Sara Price's shoulder and you will see the name--Jethro Bass.

It bursts from the lips of Fletcher Bartlett himself--of Fletcher,
inflammable as gunpowder.

“Gentlemen, I withdraw as your candidate, and nominate a better and an
abler man,--Jethro Bass.”

“Jethro Bass for Chairman of the Selectmen!”

The cry is taken up all over the meeting-house, and rises high above the
hiss of the sleet on the great windows. Somebody's got on the stove, to
add to the confusion and horror. The only man in the whole place who is
not excited is Jethro Bass himself, who sits in his chair regardless of
those pressing around him. Many years afterward he confessed to some one
that he was surprised--and this is true. Fletcher Bartlett had surprised
and tricked him, but was forgiven. Forty men are howling at the
moderator, who is pounding on the table with a blacksmith's blows.
Squire Asa Northcutt, with his arms fanning like a windmill from the
edge of the platform, at length shouts down everybody else--down to a
hum. Some listen to him: hear the words “infamous outrage”--“if Jethro
Bass is elected Selectman, Coniston will never be able to hold up her
head among her sister towns for very shame.” (Momentary blank, for
somebody has got on the stove again, a scuffle going on there.) “I see
it all now,” says the Squire--(marvel of perspicacity!) “Jethro Bass has
debased and debauched this town--” (blank again, and the squire points
a finger of rage and scorn at the unmoved offender in the chair) “he
has bought and intimidated men to do his bidding. He has sinned against
heaven, and against the spirit of that most immortal of documents--”
 (Blank again. Most unfortunate blank, for this is becoming oratory, but
somebody from below has seized the squire by the leg.) Squire Northcutt
is too dignified and elderly a person to descend to rough and tumble,
but he did get his leg liberated and kicked Fletcher Bartlett in the
face. Oh, Coniston, that such scenes should take place in your town
meeting! By this time another is orating, Mr. Sam Price, Jackson
Democrat. There was no shorthand reporter in Coniston in those days,
and it is just as well, perhaps, that the accusations and recriminations
should sink into oblivion.

At last, by mighty efforts of the peace loving in both parties,
something like order is restored, the ballots are in the box, and Deacon
Lysander is counting them: not like another moderator I have heard of,
who spilled the votes on the floor until his own man was elected.
No. Had they registered his own death sentence, the deacon would have
counted them straight, and needed no town clerk to verify his
figures. But when he came to pronounce the vote, shame and sorrow and
mortification overcame him. Coniston, his native town, which he had
served and revered, was dishonored, and it was for him, Lysander
Richardson, to proclaim her disgrace. The deacon choked, and tears of
bitterness stood in his eyes, and there came a silence only broken by
the surging of the sleet as he rapped on the table.

“Seventy-five votes have been cast for Jethro Bass--sixty-three for
Moses Hatch. Necessary for a choice, seventy--and Jethro Bass is elected
senior Selectman.”

The deacon sat down, and men say that a great sob shook him, while
Jacksonian Democracy went wild--not looking into future years to see
what they were going wild about. Jethro Bass Chairman of the Board of
Selectmen, in the honored place of Deacon Moses Hatch! Bourbon royalists
never looked with greater abhorrence on the Corsican adventurer and
usurper of the throne than did the orthodox in Coniston on this tanner,
who had earned no right to aspire to any distinction, and who by his
wiles had acquired the highest office in the town government. Fletcher
Bartlett in, as a leader of the irresponsible opposition, would have
been calamity enough. But Jethro Bass!

This man whom they had despised was the master mind who had organized
and marshalled the loose vote, was the author of that ticket, who sat in
his corner unmoved alike by the congratulations of his friends and the
maledictions of his enemies; who rose to take his oath of office as
unconcerned as though the house were empty, albeit Deacon Lysander
could scarcely get the words out. And then Jethro sat down again in his
chair--not to leave it for six and thirty years. From this time forth
that chair became a seat of power, and of dominion over a state.

Thus it was that Jock Hallowell's prophecy, so lightly uttered, came to
pass.

How the remainder of that Jacksonian ticket was elected, down to the
very hog-reeves, and amid what turmoil of the Democracy and bitterness
of spirit of the orthodox, I need not recount. There is no moral to
the story, alas--it was one of those things which inscrutable heaven
permitted to be done. After that dark town-meeting day some of those
stern old fathers became broken men, and it is said in Coniston that
this calamity to righteous government, and not the storm, gave to Priest
Ware his death-stroke.




CHAPTER VI

And now we must go back for a chapter--a very short chapter--to the day
before that town meeting which had so momentous an influence upon the
history of Coniston and of the state. That Monday, too, it will be
remembered, dawned in storm, the sleet hissing in the wide throats of
the centre-chimneys, and bearing down great boughs of trees until they
broke in agony. Dusk came early, and howling darkness that hid a muffled
figure on the ice-bound road staring at the yellow cracks in the tannery
door. Presently the figure crossed the yard; the door, flying open,
released a shaft of light that shot across the white ground, revealed a
face beneath a hood to him who stood within.

“Jethro!”

She darted swiftly past him, seizing the door and drawing it closed
after her. A lantern hung on the central post and flung its rays upon
his face. Her own, mercifully, was in the shadow, and burning now with
a shame that was insupportable. Now that she was there, beside him, her
strength failed her, and her courage--courage that she had been storing
for this dread undertaking throughout the whole of that dreadful day.
Now that she was there, she would have given her life to have been able
to retrace her steps, to lose herself in the wild, dark places of the
mountain.

“Cynthy!” His voice betrayed the passion which her presence had
quickened.

The words she would have spoken would not come. She could think of
nothing but that she was alone with him, and in bodily terror of him.
She turned to the door again, to grasp the wooden latch; but he barred
the way, and she fell back.

“Let me go,” she cried. “I did not mean to come. Do you hear?--let me
go!”

To her amazement he stepped aside--a most unaccountable action for him.
More unaccountable still, she did not move, now that she was free, but
stood poised for flight, held by she knew not what.

“G-go if you've a mind to, Cynthy--if you've a mind to.”

“I've come to say something to you,” she faltered. It was not, at all
the way she had pictured herself as saying it.

“H-haven't took' Moses--have you?”

“Oh,” she cried, “do you think I came here to speak of such a thing as
that?”

“H-haven't took--Moses, have you?”

She was trembling, and yet she could almost have smiled at this
well-remembered trick of pertinacity.

“No,” she said, and immediately hated herself for answering him.

“H-haven't took that Worthington cuss?”

He was jealous!

“I didn't come to discuss Mr. Worthington,” she replied.

“Folks say it's only a matter of time,” said he. “Made up your mind to
take him, Cynthy? M-made up your mind?”

“You've no right to talk to me in this way,” she said, and added, the
words seeming to slip of themselves from her lips, “Why do you do it?”

“Because I'm--interested,” he said.

“You haven't shown it,” she flashed back, forgetting the place, and the
storm, and her errand even, forgetting that Jake Wheeler, or any one in
Coniston, might come and surprise her there.

He took a step toward her, and she retreated. The light struck her face,
and he bent over her as though searching it for a sign. The cape on her
shoulders rose and fell as she breathed.

“'Twahn't charity, Cynthy--was it? 'Twahn't charity?”

“It was you who called it such,” she answered, in a low voice.

A sleet-charged gust hurled itself against the door, and the lantern
flickered.

“Wahn't it charity.”

“It was friendship, Jethro. You ought to have known that, and you should
not have brought back the book.”

“Friendship,” he repeated, “y-you said friendship?”

“Yes.”

“M-meant friendship?”

“Yes,” said Cynthia, but more faintly, and yet with a certain delicious
fright as she glanced at him shyly. Surely there had never been a
stranger man! Now he was apparently in a revery.

“G-guess it's because I'm not good enough to be anything more,” he
remarked suddenly. “Is that it?”

“You have not tried even to be a friend,” she said.

“H-how about Worthington?” he persisted. “Just friends with him?”

“I won't talk about Mr. Worthington,” cried Cynthia, desperately, and
retreated toward the lantern again.

“J-just friends with Worthington?”

“Why?” she asked, her words barely heard above the gust, “why do you
want to know?”

He came after her. It was as if she had summoned some unseen,
uncontrollable power, only to be appalled by it, and the mountain-storm
without seemed the symbol of it. His very voice seemed to partake of its
strength.

“Cynthy,” he said, “if you'd took him, I'd have killed him. Cynthy, I
love you--I want you to be my woman--”

“Your woman!”

He caught her, struggling wildly, terror-stricken, in his arms, beat
down her hands, flung back her hood, and kissed her forehead--her hair,
blown by the wind--her lips. In that moment she felt the mystery of
heaven and hell, of all kinds of power. In that moment she was like a
seed flying in the storm above the mountain spruces whither, she knew
not, cared not. There was one thought that drifted across the chaos like
a blue light of the spirit: Could she control the storm? Could she say
whither the winds might blow, where the seed might be planted? Then
she found herself listening, struggling no longer, for he held her
powerless. Strangest of all, most hopeful of all, his own mind was
working, though his soul rocked with passion.

“Cynthy--ever since we stopped that day on the road in Northcutt's
woods, I've thought of nothin' but to marry you--m-marry you. Then you
give me that book--I hain't had much education, but it come across me
if you was to help me that way--And when I seed you with Worthington, I
could have killed him easy as breakin' bark.”

“Hush, Jethro.”

She struggled free and leaped away from him, panting, while he tore open
his coat and drew forth something which gleamed in the lantern's rays--a
silver locket. Cynthia scarcely saw it. Her blood was throbbing in her
temples, she could not reason, but she knew that the appeal for the sake
of which she had stooped must be delivered now.

“Jethro,” she said, “do you know why I came here--why I came to you?”

“No,” he said. “No. W--wanted me, didn't you? Wanted me--I wanted you,
Cynthy.”

“I would never have come to you for that,” she cried, “never!”

“L-love me, Cynthy--love me, don't you?”

How could he ask, seeing that she had been in his arms, and had not
fled? And yet she must go through with what she had come to do, at any
cost.

“Jethro, I have come to speak to you about the town meeting tomorrow.”

He halted as though he had been struck, his hand tightening over the
locket.

“T-town meetin'?”

“Yes. All this new organization is your doing,” she cried. “Do you think
that I am foolish enough to believe that Fletcher Bartlett or Sam Price
planned this thing? No, Jethro. I know who has done it, and I could have
told them if they had asked me.”

He looked at her, and the light of a new admiration was in his eye.

“Knowed it--did you?”

“Yes,” she answered, a little defiantly, “I did.”

“H-how'd you know it--how'd you know it, Cynthy?” How did she know it,
indeed?

“I guessed it,” said Cynthia, desperately, “knowing you, I guessed it.”

“A-always thought you was smart, Cynthy.”

“Tell me, did you do this thing?”

“Th-thought you knowed it--th-thought you knowed.”

“I believe that these men are doing your bidding.”

“Hain't you guessin' a little mite too much; Cynthy?”

“Jethro,” she said, “you told me just now that--that you loved me. Don't
touch me!” she cried, when he would have taken her in his arms again.
“If you love me, you will tell me why you have done such a thing.”

What instinct there was in the man which forbade him speaking out to
her, I know not. I do believe that he would have confessed, if he could.
Isaac Worthington had been impelled to reveal his plans and aspirations,
but Jethro Bass was as powerless in this supreme moment of his life as
was Coniston Mountain to move the granite on which it stood. Cynthia's
heart sank, and a note of passionate appeal came into her voice.

“Oh, Jethro!” she cried, “this is not the way to use your power, to
compel men like Eben Williams and Samuel Todd and--and Lyman Hull, who
is a drunkard and a vagabond, to come in and vote for those who are not
fit to hold office.” She was using the minister's own arguments. “We
have always had clean men, and honorable and good men.”

He did not speak, but dropped his hands to his sides. His thoughts
were not to be fathomed, yet Cynthia took the movement for silent
confession,--which it was not, and stood appalled at the very magnitude
of his accomplishment, astonished at the secrecy he had maintained. She
had heard that his name had been mentioned in the meeting at the house
of Moses Hatch as having taken part in the matter, and she guessed
something of certain of his methods. But she had felt his force, and
knew that this was not the only secret of his power.

What might he not aspire to, if properly guided? No, she did not believe
him to be, unscrupulous--but merely ignorant: a man who was capable of
such love as she felt was in him, a man whom she could love, could not
mean to be unscrupulous. Defence of him leaped to her own lips.

“You did not know what you were doing,” she said. “I was sure of it,
or I would not have come to you. Oh, Jethro! you must stop it--you must
prevent this election.”

Her eyes met his, her own pleading, and the very wind without seemed to
pause for his answer. But what she asked was impossible. That wind
which he himself had loosed, which was to topple over institutions, was
rising, and he could no more have stopped it then than he could have
hushed the storm.

“You will not do what I ask--now?” she said, very slowly. Then her voice
failed her, she drew her hands together, and it was as if her heart had
ceased to beat. Sorrow and anger and fierce shame overwhelmed her, and
she turned from him in silence and went to the door.

“Cynthy,” he cried hoarsely, “Cynthy!”

“You must never speak to me again,” she said, and was gone into the
storm.

Yes, she had failed. But she did not know that she had left something
behind which he treasured as long as he lived.

In the spring, when the new leaves were green on the slopes of Coniston,
Priest Ware ended a life of faithful service. The high pulpit, taken
from the old meeting house, and the cricket on which he used to stand
and the Bible from which he used to preach have remained objects of
veneration in Coniston to this day. A fortnight later many tearful faces
gazed after the Truro coach as it galloped out of Brampton in a cloud
of dust, and one there was watching unseen from the spruces on the hill,
who saw within it a girl dressed in black, dry-eyed, staring from the
window.




CHAPTER VII

Out of the stump of a blasted tree in the Coniston woods a flower will
sometimes grow, and even so the story which I have now to tell springs
from the love of Cynthia Ware and Jethro Bass. The flower, when it came
to bloom, was fair in life, and I hope that in these pages it will not
lose too much of its beauty and sweetness.

For a little while we are going to gallop through the years as before we
have ambled through the days, although the reader's breath may be
taken away in the process. How Cynthia Ware went over the Truro Pass to
Boston, and how she became a teacher in a high school there;--largely
through the kindness of that Miss Lucretia Penniman of whom we have
spoken, who wrote in Cynthia's behalf to certain friends she had in
that city; how she met one William Wetherell, no longer a clerk in
Mr. Judson's jewellery shop, but a newspaper man with I know not what
ambitions--and limitations in strength of body and will; how, many, many
years afterward, she nursed him tenderly through a sickness and--married
him, is all told in a paragraph. Marry him she did, to take care of him,
and told him so. She made no secret of the maternal in this love.

One evening, the summer after their marriage, they were walking in the
Mall under the great elms that border the Common on the Tremont Street
side. They often used to wander there, talking of the books he was to
write when strength should come and a little leisure, and sometimes
their glances would linger longingly on Colonnade Row that Bulfinch
built across the way, where dwelt the rich and powerful of the city--and
yet he would not have exchanged their lot for his. Could he have earned
with his own hands such a house, and sit Cynthia there in glory, what
happiness! But, I stray.

They were walking in the twilight, for the sun had sunk all red in the
marshes of the Charles, when there chanced along a certain Mr. Judson,
a jeweller, taking the air likewise. So there came into Wetherell's mind
that amusing adventure with the country lad and the locket. His name,
by reason of some strange quality in it, he had never forgotten, and
suddenly he recalled that the place the countryman had come from was
Coniston.

“Cynthia,” said her husband, when Mr. Judson was gone, “did you know any
one in Coniston named Jethro Bass?”

She did not answer him. And, thinking she had not heard, he spoke again.

“Why do you ask?” she said, in a low tone, without looking at him.

He told her the story. Not until the end of it did the significance of
the name engraved come to him--Cynthy.

“Cynthy, from Jethro.”

“Why, it might have been you!” he said jestingly. “Was he an admirer of
yours, Cynthia, that strange, uncouth countryman? Did he give you the
locket?”

“No,” she answered, “he never did.”

Wetherell glanced at her in surprise, and saw that her lip was
quivering, that tears were on her lashes. She laid her hand on his arm.

“William,” she said, drawing him to a bench, “come, let us sit down, and
I will tell you the story of Jethro Bass. We have been happy together,
you and I, for I have found peace with you. I have tried to be honest
with you, William, and I will always be so. I told you before we were
married that I loved another man. I have tried to forget him, but as God
is my judge, I cannot. I believe I shall love him until I die.”

They sat in the summer twilight, until darkness fell, and the lights
gleamed through the leaves, and a deep, cool breath coming up from the
sea stirred the leaves above their heads. That she should have loved
Jethro seemed as strange to her as to him, and yet Wetherell was to feel
the irresistible force of him. Hers was not a love that she chose, or
would have chosen, but something elemental that cried out from the man
to her, and drew her. Something that had in it now, as of yore, much of
pain and even terror, but drew her. Strangest of all was that William
Wetherell understood and was not jealous of this thing: which leads
us to believe that some essence of virility was lacking in him, some
substance that makes the fighters and conquerors in this world. In such
mood he listened to the story of Jethro Bass.

“My dear husband,” said Cynthia, when she had finished, her hand
tightening over his, “I have never told you this for fear that it might
trouble you as it has troubled me. I have found in your love sanctuary;
and all that remains of myself I have given to you.”

“You have found a weakling to protect, and an invalid to nurse,” he
answered. “To have your compassion, Cynthia, is all I crave.”

So they lived through the happiest and swiftest years of his life,
working side by side, sharing this strange secret between them. And
after that night Cynthia talked to him often of Coniston, until he
came to know the mountain that lay along the western sky, and the sweet
hillsides by Coniston Water under the blue haze of autumn, aye, and
clothed in the colors of spring, the bright blossoms of thorn and apple
against the tender green of the woods and fields. So he grew to love the
simple people there, but little did he foresee that he was to end his
life among them!

But so it came to pass, she was taken from him, who had been the one joy
and inspiration of his weary days, and he was driven, wandering, into
unfrequented streets that he might not recall, the places where she had
once trod, and through the wakeful nights her voice haunted him,--its
laughter, its sweet notes of seriousness; little ways and manners of her
look came to twist his heart, and he prayed God to take him, too, until
it seemed that Cynthia frowned upon him for his weakness. One mild
Sunday afternoon, he took little Cynthia by the hand and led her,
toddling, out into the sunny Common, where he used to walk with her
mother, and the infant prattle seemed to bring--at last a strange peace
to his storm-tossed soul.

For many years these Sunday walks in the Common were Wetherell's
greatest pleasure and solace, and it seemed as though little Cynthia had
come into the world with an instinct, as it were, of her mission that
lent to her infant words a sweet gravity and weight. Many people used to
stop and speak to the child, among them a great physician whom they grew
to know. He was, there every Sunday, and at length it came to be a habit
with him to sit down on the bench and take Cynthia on his knee, and his
stern face would soften as he talked to her.

One Sunday when Cynthia was eight years old he missed them, and the
next, and at dusk he strode into their little lodging behind the hill
and up to the bedside. He glanced at Wetherell, patting Cynthia on the
head the while, and bade her cheerily to go out of the room. But
she held tight hold of her father's hand and looked up at the doctor
bravely.

“I am taking care of my father,” she said.

“So you shall, little woman,” he answered. “I would that we had such
nurses as you at the hospital. Why didn't you send for me at once?”

“I wanted to,” said Cynthia.

“Bless her good sense;” said the doctor; “she has more than you,
Wetherell. Why didn't you take her advice? If your father does not do
as I tell him, he will be a very sick man indeed. He must go into the
country and stay there.”

“But I must live, Doctor,” said William Wetherell.

The doctor looked at Cynthia.

“You will not live if you stay here,” he replied.

“Then he will go,” said Cynthia, so quietly that he gave her another
look, strange and tender and comprehending. He, sat and talked of many
things: of the great war that was agonizing the nation; of the strong
man who, harassed and suffering himself, was striving to guide it,
likening Lincoln unto a physician. So the doctor was wont to take the
minds of patients from themselves. And before he left he gave poor
Wetherell a fortnight to decide.

As he lay on his back in that room among the chimney tops trying vainly
to solve the problem of how he was to earn his salt in the country, a
visitor was climbing the last steep flight of stairs. That visitor
was none other than Sergeant Ephraim Prescott, son of Isaiah of the
pitch-pipe, and own cousin of Cynthia Ware's. Sergeant Ephraim was just
home from the war and still clad in blue, and he walked with a slight
limp by reason of a bullet he had got in the Wilderness, and he had such
an honest, genial face that little Cynthia was on his knee in a moment.

“How be you, Will? Kind of poorly, I callate. So Cynthy's b'en took,” he
said sadly. “Always thought a sight of Cynthy. Little Cynthy favors her
some. Yes, thought I'd drop in and see how you be on my way home.”

Sergeant Ephraim had much to say about the great war, and about
Coniston. True to the instincts of the blood of the Stark hero, he had
left the plough and the furrow' at the first call, forty years of age
though he was. But it had been otherwise with many in Coniston and
Brampton and Harwich. Some of these, when the drafting came, had fled in
bands to the mountain and defied capture. Mr. Dudley Worthington, now
a mill owner, had found a substitute; Heth Sutton of Clovelly had been
drafted and had driven over the mountain to implore Jethro Bass abjectly
to get him out of it. In short, many funny things had happened--funny
things to Sergeant Ephraim, but not at all to William Wetherell, who
sympathized with Heth in his panic.

“So Jethro Bass has become a great man,” said Wetherell.

“Great!” Ephraim ejaculated. “Guess he's the biggest man in the state
to-day. Queer how he got his power began twenty-four years ago when
I wahn't but twenty. I call that town meetin' to mind as if 'twas
yesterday never was such an upset. Jethro's be'n first Selectman
ever sense, though he turned Republican in '60. Old folks don't fancy
Jethro's kind of politics much, but times change. Jethro saved my life,
I guess.”

“Saved your life!” exclaimed Wetherell.

“Got me a furlough,” said Ephraim. “Guess I would have died in the
hospital if he hadn't got it so all-fired quick, and he druv down to
Brampton to fetch me back. You'd have thought I was General Grant the
way folks treated me.”

“You went back to the war after your leg healed?” Wetherell asked, in
wondering admiration of the man's courage.

“Well,” said Ephraim, simply, “the other boys was gettin' full of
bullets and dysentery, and it didn't seem just right. The leg troubles
me some on wet days, but not to amount to much. You hain't thinkin' of
dyin' yourself, be ye, William?”

William was thinking very seriously of it, but it was Cynthia who spoke,
and startled them both.

“The doctor says he will die if he doesn't go to the country.”

“Somethin' like consumption, William?” asked Ephraim.

“So the doctor said.”

“So I callated,” said Ephraim. “Come back to Coniston with me; there
hain't a healthier place in New England.”

“How could I support myself in Coniston?” Wetherell asked.

Ephraim ruminated. Suddenly he stuck his hand into the bosom of his blue
coat, and his face lighted and even gushed as he drew out a crumpled
letter.

“It don't take much gumption to run a store, does it, William? Guess you
could run a store, couldn't you?”

“I would try anything,” said Wetherell.

“Well,” said Ephraim' “there's the store at Coniston. With folks goin'
West, and all that, nobody seems to want it much.” He looked at the
letter. “Lem Hallowell' says there hain't nobody to take it.”

“Jonah Winch's!” exclaimed Wetherell.

“Jonah made it go, but that was before all this hullabaloo about
Temperance Cadets and what not. Jonah sold good rum, but now you can't
get nothin' in Coniston but hard cider and potato whiskey. Still, it's
the place for somebody without much get-up,” and he eyed his cousin by
marriage. “Better come and try it, William.”

So much for dreams! Instead of a successor to Irving and Emerson,
William Wetherell became a successor to Jonah Winch.

That journey to Coniston was full of wonder to Cynthia, and of wonder
and sadness to Wetherell, for it was the way his other Cynthia had come
to Boston. From the state capital the railroad followed the same deep
valley as the old coach road, but ended at Truro, and then they took
stage over Truro Pass for Brampton, where honest Ephraim awaited them
and their slender luggage with a team. Brampton, with its wide-shadowed
green, and terrace-steepled church; home once of the Social Library and
Lucretia Penniman, now famous; home now of Isaac Dudley Worthington,
whose great mills the stage driver had pointed out to them on Coniston
Water as they entered the town.

Then came a drive through the cool evening to Coniston, Ephraim showing
them landmarks. There was Deacon Lysander's house, where little Rias
Richardson lived now; and on that slope and hidden in its forest nook,
among the birches and briers, the little schoolhouse where Cynthia had
learned to spell; here, where the road made an aisle in the woods, she
had met Jethro. The choir of the birds was singing an evening anthem now
as then, to the lower notes of Coniston Water, and the moist, hothouse
fragrance of the ferns rose from the deep places.

At last they came suddenly upon the little hamlet of Coniston itself.
There was the flagpole and the triangular green, scene of many a muster;
Jonah Winch's store, with its horse block and checker-paned
windows, just as Jonah had left it; Nathan Bass's tannery shed, now
weather-stained and neglected, for Jethro lived on Thousand Acre Hill
now; the Prescott house, home of the Stark hero, where Ephraim lived,
“innocent of paint” (as one of Coniston's sons has put it), “innocent
of paint as a Coniston maiden's face”; the white meeting-house, where
Priest Ware had preached--and the parsonage. Cynthia and Wetherell
loitered in front of it, while the blue shadow of the mountain deepened
into night, until Mr. Satterlee, the minister, found them there, and
they went in and stood reverently in the little chamber on the right of
the door, which had been Cynthia's.

Long Wetherell lay awake that night, in his room at the gable-end
over the store, listening to the rustling of the great oak beside the
windows, to the whippoorwills calling across Coniston Water. But at last
a peace descended upon him, and he slept: yes, and awoke with the
same sense of peace at little Cynthia's touch, to go out into the cool
morning, when the mountain side was in myriad sheens of green under the
rising sun. Behind the store was an old-fashioned garden, set about by
a neat stone wall, hidden here and there by the masses of lilac and
currant bushes, and at the south of it was a great rose-covered boulder
of granite. And beyond, through the foliage of the willows and the low
apple trees which Jonah Winch had set out, Coniston Water gleamed and
tumbled. Under an arching elm near the house was the well, stone-rimmed,
with its long pole and crotch, and bucket all green with the damp moss
which clung to it.

Ephraim Prescott had been right when he had declared that it did not
take much gumption to keep store in Coniston. William Wetherell merely
assumed certain obligations at the Brampton bank, and Lem Hallowell,
Jock's son, who now drove the Brampton stage, brought the goods to the
door. Little Rias Richardson was willing to come in, and help move the
barrels, and on such occasions wore carpet slippers to save his shoes.
William still had time for his books; in that Coniston air he began to
feel stronger, and to wonder whether he might not be a Washington Irving
yet. And yet he had one worry and one fear, and both of these concerned
one man,--Jethro Bass. Him, by her own confession, Cynthia Ware
had loved to her dying day, hating herself for it: and he, William
Wetherell, had married this woman whom Jethro had loved so violently,
and must always love--so Wetherell thought: that was the worry. How
would Jethro treat him? that was the fear. William Wetherell was not the
most courageous man in the world.

Jethro Bass had not been in Coniston since William's arrival. No need
to ask where he was. Jake Wheeler, Jethro's lieutenant in Coniston, gave
William a glowing account of that Throne Room in the Pelican Hotel at
the capital, from whence Jethro ruled the state during the sessions of
the General Court. This legislature sat to him as a sort of advisory
committee of three hundred and fifty: an expensive advisory committee to
the people, relic of an obsolete form of government. Many stories of the
now all-powerful Jethro William heard from the little coterie which made
their headquarters in his store--stories of how those methods of which
we have read were gradually spread over other towns and other counties.
Not that Jethro held mortgages in these towns and counties, but the
local lieutenants did, and bowed to him as an overlord. There were funny
stories, and grim stories of vengeance which William Wetherell heard and
trembled at. Might not Jethro wish to take vengeance upon him?

One story he did not hear, because no one in Coniston knew it. No one
knew that Cynthia Ware and Jethro Bass had ever loved each other.

At last, toward the end of June, it was noised about that the great
man was coming home for a few days. One beautiful afternoon William
Wetherell stood on the platform of the store, looking off at Coniston,
talking to Moses Hatch--young Moses, who is father of six children now
and has forgotten Cynthia Ware. Old Moses sleeps on the hillside, let
us hope in the peace of the orthodox and the righteous. A cloud of dust
arose above the road to the southward, and out of it came a country
wagon drawn by a fat horse, and in the wagon the strangest couple
Wetherell had ever seen. The little woman who sat retiringly at one end
of the seat was all in brilliant colors from bonnet to flounce, like
a paroquet, red and green predominating. The man, big in build,
large-headed, wore an old-fashioned blue swallow-tailed coat with
brass buttons, a stock, and coonskin hat, though it was summer, and
the thumping of William Wetherell's heart told him that this was Jethro
Bass. He nodded briefly at Moses Hatch, who greeted him with genial
obsequiousness.

“Legislatur' through?” shouted Moses.

The great man shook his head and drove on.

“Has Jethro Bass ever been a member of the Legislature?” asked the
storekeeper, for the sake of something to say.

“Never would take any office but Chairman of the Selectmen,” answered
Moses, who apparently bore no ill will for his father's sake. “Jethro
kind of fathers the Legislatur', I guess, though I don't take much stock
in politics. Goes down sessions to see that they don't get too gumptious
and kick off the swaddlin' clothes.”

“And--was that his wife?” Wetherell asked, hesitatingly.

“Aunt Listy, they call her. Nobody ever knew how he come to marry her.
Jethro went up to Wisdom once, in the centre of the state, and come back
with her. Funny place to bring a wife from--Wisdom! Funnier place to
bring Listy from. He loads her down with them ribbons and gewgaws--all
the shades of the rainbow! Says he wants her to be the best-dressed
woman in the state. Callate she is,” added Moses, with conviction.
“Listy's a fine woman, but all she knows is enough to say, 'Yes,
Jethro,' and 'No, Jethro.'--Guess that's all Jethro wants in a wife; but
he certainly is good to her.”

“And why has he come back before the Legislature's over?” said
Wetherell.

“Cuttin' of his farms. Always comes back hayin' time. That's the way
Jethro spends the money he makes in politics, and he hain't no more of a
farmer than--” Moses looked at Wetherell.

“Than I'm a storekeeper,” said the latter, smiling.

“Than I'm a lawyer,” said Moses, politely.

They were interrupted at this moment by the appearance of Jake Wheeler
and Sam Price, who came gaping out of the darkness of the store.

“Was that Jethro, Mose?” demanded Jake. “Guess we'll go along up and see
if there's any orders.”

“I suppose the humblest of God's critturs has their uses,” Moses
remarked contemplatively, as he watched the retreating figures of Sam
and Jake. “Leastwise that's Jethro's philosophy. When you come to know
him, you'll notice how much those fellers walk like him. Never seed a
man who had so many imitators. Some of, 'em's took to talkie' like him,
even to stutterin'. Bijah Bixby, over to Clovelly, comes pretty nigh it,
too.”

Moses loaded his sugar and beans into his wagon, and drove off.

An air of suppressed excitement seemed to pervade those who came that
afternoon to the store to trade and talk--mostly to talk. After such
purchases as they could remember were made, they lingered on the barrels
and on the stoop, in the hope of seeing Jethro, whose habit; it was,
apparently, to come down and dispense such news as he thought fit for
circulation. That Wetherell shared this excitement, too, he could not
deny, but for a different cause. At last, when the shadows of the big
trees had crept across the green, he came, the customers flocking to
the porch to greet him, Wetherell standing curiously behind them in the
door. Heedless of the dust, he strode down the road with the awkward
gait that was all his own, kicking up his heels behind. And behind him,
heels kicking up likewise, followed Jake and Sam, Jethro apparently
oblivious of their presence. A modest silence was maintained from the
stoop, broken at length by Lem Hallowell, who (men said) was an exact
reproduction of Jock, the meeting-house builder. Lem alone was not
abashed in the presence of greatness.

“How be you, Jethro?” he said heartily. “Air the Legislatur' behavin'
themselves?”

“B-bout as common,” said Jethro.

Surely nothing very profound in this remark, but received as though it
were Solomon's.

Be prepared for a change in Jethro, after the galloping years. He is
now fifty-seven, but he might be any age. He is still smooth-shaven, his
skin is clear, and his eye is bright, for he lives largely on bread and
milk, and eschews stimulants. But the lines in his face have deepened
and his big features seem to have grown bigger.

“Who be you thinkin' of for next governor, Jethro?” queries Rias
Richardson, timidly.

“They say Alvy Hopkins of Gosport is willin' to pay for it,” said
Chester Perkins, sarcastically. Chester; we fear, is a born agitator,
fated to remain always in opposition. He is still a Democrat, and
Jethro, as is well known, has extended the mortgage so as to include
Chester's farm.

“Wouldn't give a Red Brook Seedling for Alvy,” ejaculated the nasal Mr.
Price.

“D-don't like Red Brook Seedlings, Sam? D-don't like 'em?” said Jethro.
He had parted his blue coat tails and seated himself on the stoop, his
long legs hanging over it.

“Never seed a man who had a good word to say for 'em,” said Mr. Price,
with less conviction.

“Done well on mine,” said Jethro, “d-done well. I was satisfied with my
Red Brook Seedlings.”

Mr. Price's sallow face looked as if he would have contradicted another
man.

“How was that, Jethro?” piped up Jake Wheeler, voicing the general
desire.

Jethro looked off into the blue space beyond the mountain line.

“G-got mine when they first come round--seed cost me considerable.
Raised more than a hundred bushels L-Listy put some of 'em on the
table--t-then gave some to my old hoss Tom. Tom said: 'Hain't I always
been a good beast, Jethro? Hain't I carried you faithful, summer
and winter, for a good many years? And now you give me Red Brook
Seedlings?'”

Here everybody laughed, and stopped abruptly, for Jethro still looked
contemplative.

“Give some of 'em to the hogs. W-wouldn't touch 'em. H-had over a
hundred bushels on hand--n-new variety. W-what's that feller's name down
to Ayer, Massachusetts, deals in all kinds of seeds? Ellett--that's it.
Wrote to Ellet, said I had a hundred bushels of Red Brooks to sell, as
fine a lookin' potato as I had in my cellar. Made up my mind to take
what he offered, if it was only five cents. He wrote back a dollar a
bushel. I-I was always satisfied with my Red Brook Seedlings, Sam. But I
never raised any more--n-never raised any more.”

Uproarious laughter greeted the end of this story, and continued in fits
as some humorous point recurred to one or the other of the listeners.
William Wetherell perceived that the conversation, for the moment at
least, was safely away from politics, and in that dubious state where it
was difficult to reopen. This was perhaps what Jethro wanted. Even Jake
Wheeler was tongue-tied, and Jethro appeared to be lost in reflection.

At this instant a diversion occurred--a trifling diversion, so it seemed
at the time. Around the corner of the store, her cheeks flushed and her
dark hair flying, ran little Cynthia, her hands, browned already by the
Coniston sun, filled with wild strawberries.

“See what I've found, Daddy!” she cried, “see what I've found!”

Jethro Bass started, and flung back his head like a man who has heard a
voice from another world, and then he looked at the child with a kind of
stupefaction. The cry, died on Cynthia's lips, and she stopped, gazing
up at him with wonder in her eyes.

“F-found strawberries?” said Jethro, at last.

“Yes,” she answered. She was very grave and serious now, as was her
manner in dealing with people.

“S-show 'em to me,” said Jethro.

Cynthia went to him, without embarrassment, and put her hand on his
knee. Not once had he taken his eyes from her face. He put out his
own hand with an awkward, shy movement, picked a strawberry from her
fingers, and thrust it in his mouth.

“Mm,” said Jethro, gravely. “Er--what's your name, little gal--what's
your name?”

“Cynthia.”

There was a long pause.

“Er--er--Cynthia?” he said at length, “Cynthia?”

“Cynthia.”

“Er-er, Cynthia--not Cynthy?”

“Cynthia,” she said again.

He bent over her and lowered his voice.

“M-may I call you Cynthy--Cynthy?” he asked.

“Y-yes,” answered Cynthia, looking up to her father and then glancing
shyly at Jethro.

His eyes were on the mountain, and he seemed to have forgotten her
until she reached out to him, timidly, another strawberry. He seized
her little hand instead and held it between his own--much to the
astonishment of his friends.

“Whose little gal be you?” he asked.

“Dad's.”

“She's Will Wetherell's daughter,” said Lem Hallowell. “He's took on
the store. Will,” he added, turning to Wetherell, “let me make you
acquainted with Jethro Bass.”

Jethro rose slowly, and towered above Wetherell on the stoop. There was
an inscrutable look in his black eyes, as of one who sees without being
seen. Did he know who William Wetherell was? If so, he gave no sign, and
took Wetherell's hand limply.

“Will's kinder hipped on book-l'arnin',” Lemuel continued kindly. “Come
here to keep store for his health. Guess you may have heerd, Jethro,
that Will married Cynthy Ware. You call Cynthy to mind, don't ye?”

Jethro Bass dropped Wetherell's hand, but answered nothing.




CHAPTER VIII

A week passed, and Jethro did not appear in the village, report having
it that he was cutting his farms on Thousand Acre Hill. When Jethro was
farming,--so it was said,--he would not stop to talk politics even with
the President of the United States were that dignitary to lean over
his pasture fence and beckon to him. On a sultry Friday morning, when
William Wetherell was seated at Jonah Winch's desk in the cool recesses
of the store slowly and painfully going over certain troublesome
accounts which seemed hopeless, he was thrown into a panic by the sight
of one staring at him from the far side of a counter. History sometimes
reverses itself.

“What can I do for you--Mr. Bass?” asked the storekeeper, rather weakly.

“Just stepped in--stepped in,” he answered. “W-where's Cynthy?”

“She was in the garden--shall I get her?”

“No,” he said, parting his coat tails and seating himself on the
counter. “Go on figurin', don't mind me.”

The thing was manifestly impossible. Perhaps Wetherell indicated as much
by his answer.

“Like storekeepin'?” Jethro asked presently, perceiving that he did not
continue his work.

“A man must live, Mr. Bass,” said Wetherell; “I had to leave the city
for my health. I began life keeping store,” he added, “but I little
thought I should end it so.”

“Given to book-l'arnin' then, wahn't you?” Jethro remarked. He did not
smile, but stared at the square of light that was the doorway, “Judson's
jewellery store, wahn't it? Judson's?”

“Yes, Judson's,” Wetherell answered, as soon as he recovered from his
amazement. There was no telling from Jethro's manner whether he were
enemy or friend; whether he bore the storekeeper a grudge for having
attained to a happiness that had not been his.

“Hain't made a great deal out of life, hev you? N-not a great deal?”
 Jethro observed at last.

Wetherell flushed, although Jethro had merely stated a truth which had
often occurred to the storekeeper himself.

“It isn't given to all of us to find Rome in brick and leave it in
marble,” he replied a little sadly.

Jethro Bass looked at him quickly.

“Er-what's that?” he demanded. “F-found Rome in brick, left it in
marble. Fine thought.” He ruminated a little. “Never writ anything--did
you--never writ anything?”

“Nothing worth publishing,” answered poor William Wetherell.

“J-just dreamed'--dreamed and kept store. S--something to have
dreamed--eh--something to have dreamed?”

Wetherell forgot his uneasiness in the unexpected turn the conversation
had taken. It seemed very strange to him that he was at last face to
face again wish the man whom Cynthia Ware had never been able to drive
from her heart. Would, he mention her? Had he continued to love her, in
spite of the woman he had married and adorned? Wetherell asked himself
these questions before he spoke.

“It is more to have accomplished,” he said.

“S-something to have dreamed,” repeated Jethro, rising slowly from the
counter. He went toward the doorway that led into the garden, and there
he halted and stood listening.

“C-Cynthy!” he said, “C-Cynthy!”

Wetherell dropped his pen at the sound of the name on Jethro's lips. But
it was little Cynthia he was calling little Cynthia in the garden. The
child came at his voice, and stood looking up at him silently.

“H-how old be you, Cynthy?”

“Nine,” answered Cynthia, promptly.

“L-like the country, Cynthy--like the country better than the city?”

“Oh, yes,” said Cynthia.

“And country folks? L--like country folks better than city folks?”

“I didn't know many city folks,” said Cynthia. “I liked the old doctor
who sent Daddy up here ever so much, and I liked Mrs. Darwin.”

“Mis' Darwin?”

“She kept the house we lived in. She used to give me cookies,” said
Cynthia, “and bread to feed the pigeons.”

“Pigeons? F-folks keep pigeons in the city?”

“Oh, no,” said Cynthia, laughing at such an idea; “the pigeons came
on the roof under our window, and they used to fly right up on the
window-sill and feed out of my hand. They kept me company while Daddy,
was away, working. On Sundays we used to go into the Common and feed
them, before Daddy got sick. The Common was something like the country,
only not half as nice.”

“C-couldn't pick flowers in the Common and go barefoot--e--couldn't go
barefoot, Cynthy?”

“Oh, no,” said Cynthia, laughing again at his sober face.

“C-couldn't dig up the Common and plant flowers--could you?”

“Of course you couldn't.”

“P-plant 'em out there?” asked Jethro.

“Oh, yes,” cried Cynthia; “I'll show you.” She hesitated a moment, and
then thrust her hand into his. “Do you want to see?”

“Guess I do,” said he, energetically, and she led him into the garden,
pointing out with pride the rows of sweet peas and pansies, which she
had made herself. Impelled by a strange curiosity, William Wetherell
went to the door and watched them. There was a look on the face of
Jethro Bass that was new to it as he listened to the child talk of the
wondrous things around them that summer's day,--the flowers and the bees
and the brook (they must go down and stand on the brink of it), and the
songs of the vireo and the hermit thrush.

“Hain't lonely here, Cynthy--hain't lonely here?” he said.

“Not in the country,” said Cynthia. Suddenly she lifted her eyes to his
with a questioning look. “Are you lonely, sometimes?”

He did not answer at once.

“Not with you, Cynthy--not with you.”

By all of which it will be seen that the acquaintance was progressing.
They sat down for a while on the old millstone that formed the step,
and there discussed Cynthia's tastes. She was too old for dolls, Jethro
supposed. Yes, Cynthia was too old for dolls. She did not say so, but
the only doll she had ever owned had become insipid when the delight of
such a reality as taking care of a helpless father had been thrust upon
her. Books, suggested Jethro. Books she had known from her earliest
infancy: they had been piled around that bedroom over the roof. Books
and book lore and the command of the English tongue were William
Wetherell's only legacies to his daughter, and many an evening that
spring she had read him to sleep from classic volumes of prose and
poetry I hesitate to name, for fear you will think her precocious. They
went across the green to Cousin Ephraim Prescott's harness shop, where
Jethro had tied his horse, and it was settled that Cynthia liked books.

On the morning following this extraordinary conversation, Jethro Bass
and his wife departed for the state capital. Listy was bedecked in
amazing greens and yellows, and Jethro drove, looking neither to the
right nor left, his coat tails hanging down behind the seat, the reins
lying slack across the plump quarters of his horse--the same fat Tom
who, by the way, had so indignantly spurned the Iced Brook Seedlings.
And Jake Wheeler went along to bring back the team from Brampton. To
such base uses are political lieutenants sometimes put, although fate
would have told you it was an honor, and he came back to the store that
evening fairly bristling with political secrets which he could not be
induced to impart.

One evening a fortnight later, while the lieutenant was holding forth in
commendably general terms on the politics of the state to a speechless
if not wholly admiring audience, a bomb burst in their midst. William
Wetherell did not know that it was a periodical bomb, like those flung
at regular intervals from the Union mortars into Vicksburg. These bombs,
at any rate, never failed to cause consternation and fright in Coniston,
although they never did any harm. One thing noticeable, they were
always fired in Jethro's absence. And the bombardier was always Chester
Perkins, son of the most unbending and rigorous of tithing-men, but
Chester resembled his father in no particular save that he, too, was a
deacon and a pillar of the church. Deacon Ira had been tall and gaunt
and sunken and uncommunicative. Chester was stout, and said to perspire
even in winter, apoplectic, irascible, talkative, and still, as has
been said, a Democrat. He drove up to the store this evening to the not
inappropriate rumble of distant thunder, and he stood up in his wagon in
front of the gathering and shook his fist in Jake Wheeler's face.

“This town's tired of puttin' up with a King,” he cried. “Yes, King-=I
said it, and I don't care who hears me. It's time to stop this one-man
rule. You kin go and tell him I said it, Jake Wheeler, if you've a mind
to. I guess there's plenty who'll do that.”

An uneasy silence followed--the silence which cries treason louder than
any voice. Some shifted uneasily, and spat, and Jake Wheeler thrust
his hands in his pockets and walked away, as much as to say that it was
treason even to listen to such talk. Lem Hallowell seemed unperturbed.

“On the rampage agin, Chet?” he remarked.

“You'd ought to know better, Lem,” cried the enraged Chester; “hain't
the hull road by the Four Corners ready to drop into the brook? What be
you a-goin' to do about it?”

“I'll show you when I git to it,” answered Lem, quietly. And, show them
he did.

“Git to it!” shouted Chester, scornfully, “I'll git to it. I'll tell
you right now I'm a candidate for the Chairman of the Selectmen, if town
meetin' is eight months away. An', Sam Price, I'll expect the Democrats
to git into line.”

With this ultimatum Chester drove away as rapidly as he had come.

“I want to know!” said Sam Price, an exclamation peculiarly suited to
his voice. But nevertheless Sam might be counted on in each of these
little rebellions. He, too, had remained steadfast to Jacksonian
principles, and he had never forgiven Jethro about a little matter of a
state office which he (Sam) had failed to obtain.

Before he went to bed Jake Wheeler had written a letter which he
sent off to the state capital by the stage the next morning. In it he
indicted no less than twenty of his fellow-townsmen for treason; and
he also thought it wise to send over to Clovelly for Bijah Bixby,
a lieutenant in that section, to come and look over the ground and
ascertain by his well-known methods how far the treason had eaten into
the body politic. Such was Jake's ordinary procedure when the bombs were
fired, for Mr. Wheeler was nothing if not cautious.

Three mornings later, a little after seven o'clock, when the storekeeper
and his small daughter were preparing to go to Brampton upon a very
troublesome errand, Chester Perkins appeared again. It is always easy to
stir up dissatisfaction among the ne'er-do-wells (Jethro had once done
it himself), and during the three days which had elapsed since Chester
had flung down the gauntlet there had been more or less of downright
treason heard in the store. William Wetherell, who had perplexities of
his own, had done his best to keep out of the discussions that had raged
on his cracker boxes and barrels, for his head was a jumble of figures
which would not come right. And now as he stood there in the freshness
of the early summer morning, waiting for Lem Hallowell's stage, poor
Wetherell's heart was very heavy.

“Will Wetherell,” said Chester, “you be a gentleman and a student,
hain't you? Read history, hain't you?”

“I have read some,” said William Wetherell.

“I callate that a man of parts,” said Chester, “such as you be, will
help us agin corruption and a dictator. I'm a-countin' on you,
Will Wetherell. You've got the store, and you kin tell the boys the
difference between right and wrong. They'll listen to you, because
you're eddicated.”

“I don't know anything about politics,” answered Wetherell, with an
appealing glance at the silent group,--group that was always there. Rias
Richardson, who had donned the carpet slippers preparatory to tending
store for the day, shuffled inside. Deacon Lysander, his father, would
not have done so.

“You know somethin' about history and the Constitootion, don't ye?”
 demanded Chester, truculently. “N'Jethro Bass don't hold your mortgage,
does he? Bank in Brampton holds it--hain't that so? You hain't afeard of
Jethro like the rest on 'em, be you?”

“I don't know what right you have to talk to me that way, Mr. Perkins,”
 said Wetherell.

“What right? Jethro holds my mortgage--the hull town knows it-and he kin
close me out to-morrow if he's a mind to--”

“See here, Chester Perkins,” Lem Hallowell interposed, as he drove up
with the stage, “what kind of free principles be you preachin'? You'd
ought to know better'n coerce.”

“What be you a-goin' to do about that Four Corners road?” Chester cried
to the stage driver.

“I give 'em till to-morrow night to fix it,” said Lem. “Git in, Will.
Cynthy's over to the harness shop with Eph. We'll stop as we go 'long.”

“Give 'em till to-morrow night!” Chester shouted after them. “What you
goin' to do then?”

But Lem did not answer this inquiry. He stopped at the harness shop,
where Ephraim came limping out and lifted Cynthia to the seat beside her
father, and they joggled off to Brampton. The dew still lay in myriad
drops on the red herd's-grass, turning it to lavender in the morning
sun, and the heavy scent of the wet ferns hung in the forest. Lem
whistled, and joked with little Cynthia, and gave her the reins to
drive, and of last they came in sight of Brampton Street, with its
terrace-steepled church and line of wagons hitched to the common rail,
for it was market day. Father and daughter walked up and down, hand in
hand, under the great trees, and then they went to the bank.

It was a brick building on a corner opposite the common, imposing for
Brampton, and very imposing to Wetherell. It seemed like a tomb as he
entered its door, Cynthia clutching his fingers, and never but once
in his life had he been so near to leaving all hope behind. He waited
patiently by the barred windows until the clerk, who was counting bills,
chose to look up at him.

“Want to draw money?” he demanded.

The words seemed charged with irony. William Wetherell told him,
falteringly, his name and business, and he thought the man looked at him
compassionately.

“You'll have to see Mr. Worthington,” he said; “he hasn't gone to the
mills yet.”

“Dudley Worthington?” exclaimed Wetherell.

The teller smiled.

“Yes. He's the president of this bank.”'

He opened a door in the partition, and leaving Cynthia dangling her feet
from a chair, Wetherell was ushered, not without trepidation, into the
great man's office, and found himself at last in the presence of Mr.
Isaac D. Worthington, who used to wander up and down Coniston Water
searching for a mill site.

He sat behind a table covered with green leather, on which papers were
laid with elaborate neatness, and he wore a double-breasted skirted coat
of black, with braided lapels, a dark purple blanket cravat with a large
red cameo pin. And Mr. Worthington's features harmonized perfectly with
this costume--those of a successful, ambitious man who followed custom
and convention blindly; clean-shaven, save for reddish chops, blue eyes
of extreme keenness, and thin-upped mouth which had been tightening year
by year as the output of the Worthington Minx increased.

“Well, sir,” he said sharply, “what can I do for you?”

“I am William Wetherell, the storekeeper at Coniston.”

“Not the Wetherell who married Cynthia Ware!”

No, Mr. Worthington did not say that. He did not know that Cynthia Ware
was married, or alive or dead, and--let it be confessed at once--he did
not care.

This is what he did say:--

“Wetherell--Wetherell. Oh, yes, you've come about that note--the
mortgage on the store at Coniston.” He stared at William Wetherell,
drummed with his fingers on the table, and smiled slightly. “I am happy
to say that the Brampton Bank does not own this note any longer. If we
did,--merely as a matter of business, you understand” (he coughed),--“we
should have had to foreclose.”

“Don't own the note!” exclaimed Wetherell. “Who does own it?”

“We sold it a little while ago--since you asked for the extension--to
Jethro Bass.”

“Jethro Bass!” Wetherell's feet seemed to give way under him, and he sat
down.

“Mr. Bass is a little quixotic--that is a charitable way to put
it--quixotic. He does--strange things like this once in awhile.”

The storekeeper found no words to answer, but sat mutely staring at him.
Mr. Worthington coughed again.

“You appear to be an educated man. Haven't I heard some story of your
giving up other pursuits in Boston to come up here for your health?
Certainly I place you now. I confess to a little interest in literature
myself--in libraries.”

In spite of his stupefaction at the news he had just received, Wetherell
thought of Mr. Worthington's beaver hat, and of that gentleman's first
interest in libraries, for Cynthia had told the story to her husband.

“It is perhaps an open secret,” continued Mr. Worthington, “that in the
near future I intend to establish a free library in Brampton. I feel it
my duty to do all I can for the town where I have made my success, and
there is nothing which induces more to the popular welfare than a good
library.” Whereupon he shot at Wetherell another of his keen looks.
“I do not talk this way ordinarily to my customers, Mr. Wetherell,” he
began; “but you interest me, and I am going to tell you something in
confidence. I am sure it will not be betrayed.”

“Oh, no,” said the bewildered storekeeper, who was in no condition to
listen to confidences.

He went quietly to the door, opened it, looked out, and closed it
softly. Then he looked out of the window.

“Have a care of this man Bass,” he said, in a lower voice. “He began
many years ago by debauching the liberties of that little town of
Coniston, and since then he has gradually debauched the whole state,
judges and all. If I have a case to try” (he spoke now with more
intensity and bitterness), “concerning my mills, or my bank, before I
get through I find that rascal mixed up in it somewhere, and unless I
arrange matters with him, I--”

He paused abruptly, his eyes going out of the window, pointing with a
long finger at a grizzled man crossing the street with a yellow and red
horse blanket thrown over his shoulders.

“That man, Judge Baker, holding court in this town now, Bass owns body
and soul.”

“And the horse blanket?” Wetherell queried, irresistibly.

Dudley Worthington did not smile.

“Take my advice, Mr. Wetherell, and pay off that note somehow.” An odor
of the stable pervaded the room, and a great unkempt grizzled head and
shoulders, horse blanket and all, were stuck into it.

“Mornin', Dudley,” said the head, “busy?”

“Come right in, Judge,” answered Mr. Worthington. “Never too busy to see
you.” The head disappeared.

“Take my advice, Mr. Wetherell.”

And then the storekeeper went into the bank.

For some moments he stood dazed by what he had heard, the query ringing
in his head: Why had Jethro Bass bought that note? Did he think that the
storekeeper at Coniston would be of use to him, politically? The words
Chester Perkins had spoken that morning came back to Wetherell as he
stood in the door. And how was he to meet Jethro Bass again with no
money to pay even the interest on the note? Then suddenly he missed
Cynthia, hurried out, and spied her under the trees on the common so
deep in conversation with a boy that she did not perceive him until he
spoke to her. The boy looked up, smiling frankly at something Cynthia
had said to him. He had honest, humorous eyes, and a browned, freckled
face, and was, perhaps, two years older than Cynthia.

“What's the matter?” said Wetherell.

Cynthia's face was flushed, and she was plainly vexed about something.

“I gave her a whistle,” said the boy, with a little laugh of vexation,
“and now she says she won't take it because I owned up I made it for
another girl.”

Cynthia held it out to him, not deigning to appeal her ease.

“You must take it back,” she said.

“But I want you to have it,” said the boy.

“It wouldn't be right for me to take it when you made it for somebody
else.”

After all, people with consciences are born, not made. But this was a
finer distinction that the boy had ever met with in his experience.

“I didn't know you when I made the whistle,” he objected, puzzled and
downcast.

“That doesn't make any difference.”

“I like you better than the other girl.”

“You have no right to,” retorted the casuist; “you've known her longer.”

“That doesn't make any difference,” said the boy; “there are lots of
people I don't like I have always known. This girl doesn't live in
Brampton, anyway.”

“Where does she live?” demanded Cynthia,--which was a step backward.

“At the state capital. Her name's Janet Duncan. There, do you believe me
now?”

William Wetherell had heard of Janet Duncan's father, Alexander Duncan,
who had the reputation of being the richest man in the state. And he
began to wonder who the boy could be.

“I believe you,” said Cynthia; “but as long as you made it for her, it's
hers. Will you take it?”

“No,” said he, determinedly.

“Very well,” answered Cynthia. She laid down the whistle beside him on
the rail, and went off a little distance and seated herself on a bench.
The boy laughed.

“I like that girl,” he remarked; “the rest of 'em take everything I give
'em, and ask for more. She's prettier'n any of 'em, too.”

“What is your name?” Wetherell asked him, curiously, forgetting his own
troubles.

“Bob Worthington.”

“Are you the son of Dudley Worthington”

“Everybody asks me that,” he said; “I'm tired of it. When I grow up,
they'll have to stop it.”

“But you should be proud of your father.”

“I am proud of him, everybody's proud of him, Brampton's proud of
him--he's proud of himself. That's enough, ain't it?” He eyed Wetherell
somewhat defiantly, then his glance wandered to Cynthia, and he walked
over to her. He threw himself down on the grass in front of her, and
lay looking up at her solemnly. For a while she continued to stare
inflexibly at the line of market wagons, and then she burst into a
laugh.

“Thought you wouldn't hold out forever,” he remarked.

“It's because you're so foolish,” said Cynthia, “that's why I laughed.”
 Then she grew sober again and held out her hand to him. “Good-by.”

“Where are you going?”

“I must go back to my father. I--I think he doesn't feel very well.”

“Next time I'll make a whistle for you,” he called after her.

“And give it to somebody else,” said Cynthia.

She had hold of her father's hand by that, but he caught up with her,
very red in the face.

“You know that isn't true,” he cried angrily, and taking his way across
Brampton Street, turned, and stood staring after them until they were
out of sight.

“Do you like him, Daddy?” asked Cynthia.

William Wetherell did not answer. He had other things to think about.

“Daddy?”

“Yes.”

“Does your trouble feel any better?”

“Some, Cynthia. But you mustn't think about it.”

“Daddy, why don't you ask Uncle Jethro to help you?”

At the name Wetherell started as if he had had a shock.

“What put him into your head, Cynthia?” he asked sharply. “Why do you
call him 'Uncle Jethro'?”

“Because he asked me to. Because he likes me, and I like him.”

The whole thing was a riddle he could not solve--one that was best left
alone. They had agreed to walk back the ten miles to Coniston, to save
the money that dinner at the hotel would cost. And so they started,
Cynthia flitting hither and thither along the roadside, picking the
stately purple iris flowers in the marshy places, while Wetherell
pondered.




BOOK 2.




CHAPTER IX

When William Wetherell and Cynthia had reached the last turn in the
road in Northcutt's woods, quarter of a mile from Coniston, they met the
nasal Mr. Samuel Price driving silently in the other direction. The
word “silently” is used deliberately, because to Mr. Price appertained
a certain ghostlike quality of flitting, and to Mr. Price's horse and
wagon likewise. He drew up for a brief moment when he saw Wetherell.

“Wouldn't hurry back if I was you, Will.”

“Why not?”

Mr. Price leaned out of the wagon.

“Bije has come over from Clovelly to spy around a little mite.”

It was evident from Mr. Price's manner that he regarded the storekeeper
as a member of the reform party.

“What did he say, Daddy?” asked Cynthia, as Wetherell stood staring
after the flitting buggy in bewilderment.

“I haven't the faintest idea, Cynthia,” answered her father, and they
walked on.

“Don't you know who 'Bije' is?

“No,” said her father, “and I don't care.”

It was almost criminal ignorance for a man who lived in that part of
the country not to know Bijah Bixby of Clovelly, who was paying a
little social visit to Coniston that day on his way home from the state
capital,--tending, as it were, Jethro's flock. Still, Wetherell must be
excused because he was an impractical literary man with troubles of
his own. But how shall we chronicle Bijah's rank and precedence in
the Jethro army, in which there are neither shoulder-straps nor annual
registers? To designate him as the Chamberlain of that hill Rajah, the
Honorable Heth Sutton, would not be far out of the way. The Honorable
Heth, whom we all know and whom we shall see presently, is the man of
substance and of broad acres in Clovelly: Bijah merely owns certain
mortgages in that town, but he had created the Honorable Heth
(politically) as surely as certain prime ministers we could name have
created their sovereigns. The Honorable Heth was Bijah's creation, and a
grand creation he was, as no one will doubt when they see him.

Bijah--as he will not hesitate to tell you--took Heth down in his pocket
to the Legislature, and has more than once delivered him, in certain
blocks of five and ten, and four and twenty, for certain considerations.
The ancient Song of Sixpence applies to Bijah, but his pocket was
generally full of proxies instead of rye, and the Honorable Heth was
frequently one of the four and twenty blackbirds. In short, Bijah was
the working bee, and the Honorable Heth the ornamental drone.

I do not know why I have dwelt so long on such a minor character as
Bijah, except that the man fascinates me. Of all the lieutenants in the
state, his manners bore the closest resemblance to those of Jethro Bass.
When he walked behind Jethro in the corridors of the Pelican, kicking up
his heels behind, he might have been taken for Jethro's shadow. He was
of a good height and size, smooth-shaven, with little eyes that kindled,
and his mouth moved not at all when he spoke: unlike Jethro, he “used”
 tobacco.

When Bijah had driven into Coniston village and hitched his wagon to
the rail, he went direct to the store. Chester Perkins and others were
watching him with various emotions from the stoop, and Bijah took a
seat in the midst of them, characteristically engaging in conversation
without the usual conventional forms of greeting, as if he had been
there all day.

“H-how much did you git for your wool, Chester--h-how much?”

“Guess you hain't here to talk about wool, Bije,” said Chester, red with
anger.

“Kind of neglectin' the farm lately, I hear,” observed Bijah.

“Jethro Bass sent you up to find out how much I was neglectin' it,”
 retorted Chester, throwing all caution to the winds.

“Thinkin' of upsettin' Jethro, be you? Thinkin' of upsettin' Jethro?”
 remarked Bije, in a genial tone.

“Folks in Clovelly hain't got nothin' to do with it, if I am,” said
Chester.

“Leetle early for campaignin', Chester, leetle early.”

“We do our campaignin' when we're a mind to.”

Bijah looked around.

“Well, that's funny. I could have took oath I seed Rias Richardson
here.”

There was a deep silence.

“And Sam Price,” continued Bijah, in pretended astonishment, “wahn't he
settin' on the edge of the stoop when I drove up?”

Another silence, broken only by the enraged breathing of Chester, who
was unable to retort. Moses Hatch laughed. The discreet departure of
these gentlemen certainly had its comical side.

“Rias as indoostrious as ever, Mose?” inquired Bijah.

“He has his busy times,” said Mose, grinning broadly.

“See you've got the boys with their backs up, Chester,” said Bijah.

“Some of us are sick of tyranny,” cried Chester; “you kin tell that to
Jethro Bass when you go back, if he's got time to listen to you buyin'
and sellin' out of railroads.”

“Hear Jethro's got the Grand Gulf Road in his pocket to do as he's a
mind to with,” said Moses, with a view to drawing Bijah out. But the
remark had exactly the opposite effect, Bijah screwing up his face into
an expression of extraordinary secrecy and cunning.

“How much did you git out of it, Bije?” demanded Chester.

“Hain't looked through my clothes yet,” said Bijah, his face screwed
up tighter than ever. “N-never look through my clothes till I git home,
Chester, it hain't safe.”

It has become painfully evident that Mr. Bixby is that rare type of man
who can sit down under the enemy's ramparts and smoke him out. It was a
rule of Jethro's code either to make an effective departure or else to
remain and compel the other man to make an ineffective departure. Lem
Hallowell might have coped with him; but the stage was late, and after
some scratching of heads and delving for effectual banter (through which
Mr. Bixby sat genial and unconcerned), Chester's followers took their
leave, each choosing his own pretext.

In the meantime William Wetherell had entered the store by the back
door--unperceived, as he hoped. He had a vehement desire to be left in
peace, and to avoid politics and political discussions forever--vain
desire for the storekeeper of Coniston. Mr. Wetherell entered the store,
and to take his mind from his troubles, he picked up a copy of Byron:
gradually the conversation on the stoop died away, and just as he
was beginning to congratulate himself and enjoy the book, he had an
unpleasant sensation of some one approaching him measuredly. Wetherell
did not move; indeed, he felt that he could not--he was as though
charmed to the spot. He could have cried aloud, but the store was empty,
and there was no one to hear him. Mr. Bixby did not speak until he was
within a foot of his victim's ear. His voice was very nasal, too.

“Wetherell, hain't it?”

The victim nodded helplessly.

“Want to see you a minute.”

“What is it?”

“Where can we talk private?” asked Mr. Bixby, looking around.

“There's no one here,” Wetherell answered. “What do you wish to say?”

“If the boys was to see me speakin' to you, they might git
suspicious--you understand,” he confided, his manner conveying a hint
that they shared some common policy.

“I don't meddle with politics,” said Wetherell, desperately.

“Exactly!” answered Bijah, coming even closer. “I knowed you was a
level-headed man, moment I set eyes on you. Made up my mind I'd have a
little talk in private with you--you understand. The boys hain't got no
reason to suspicion you care anything about politics, have they?”

“None whatever.”

“You don't pay no attention to what they say?”

“None.”

“You hear it?”

“Sometimes I can't help it.”

“Ex'actly! You hear it.”

“I told you I couldn't help it.”

“Want you should vote right when the time comes,” said Bijah. “D-don't
want to see such an intelligent man go wrong an' be sorry for it--you
understand. Chester Perkins is hare-brained. Jethro Bass runs things in
this state.”

“Mr. Bixby--”

“You understand,” said Bijah, screwing up his face. “Guess your watch
is a-comin' out.” He tucked it back caressingly, and started for the
door--the back door. Involuntarily Wetherell put his hand to his pocket,
felt something crackle under it, and drew the something out. To his
amazement it was a ten-dollar bill.

“Here!” he cried so sharply in his fright that Mr. Bixby, turned around.
Wetherell ran after him. “Take this back!”

“Guess you got me,” said Bijah. “W-what is it?”

“This money is yours,” cried Wetherell, so loudly that Bijah started and
glanced at the front of the store.

“Guess you made some mistake,” he said, staring at the storekeeper with
such amazing innocence that he began to doubt his senses, and clutched
the bill to see if it was real.

“But I had no money in my pocket,” said Wetherell, perplexedly. And
then, gaining, indignation, “Take this to the man who sent you, and give
it back to him.”

But Bijah merely whispered caressingly in his ear, “Nobody sent me,--you
understand,--nobody sent me,” and was gone. Wetherell stood for a
moment, dazed by the man's audacity, and then, hurrying to the front
stoop, the money still in his hand, he perceived Mr. Bixby in the sunlit
road walking, Jethro-fashion, toward Ephraim Prescott's harness shop.

“Why, Daddy,” said Cynthia, coming in from the garden, “where did you
get all that money? Your troubles must feel better.”

“It is not mine,” said Wetherell, starting. And then, quivering with
anger and mortification, he sank down on the stoop to debate what he
should do.

“Is it somebody else's?” asked the child, presently.

“Yes.”

“Then why don't you give it back to them, Daddy?”

How was Wetherell to know, in his fright, that Mr. Bixby had for once
indulged in an overabundance of zeal in Jethro's behalf? He went to the
door, laughter came to him across the green from the harness shop, and
his eye following the sound, fastened on Bijah seated comfortably in the
midst of the group there. Bitterly the storekeeper comprehended that,
had he possessed courage, he would have marched straight after Mr. Bixby
and confronted him before them all with the charge of bribery. The blood
throbbed in his temples, and yet he sat there, trembling, despising
himself, repeating that he might have had the courage if Jethro Bass
had not bought the mortgage. The fear of the man had entered the
storekeeper's soul.

“Does it belong to that man over there?” asked Cynthia.

“Yes.”

“I'll take it to him, Daddy,” and she held out her hand.

“Not now,” Wetherell answered nervously, glancing at the group. He went
into the store, addressed an envelope to “Mr. Bijah Bixby of Clovelly,”
 and gave it to Cynthia. “When he comes back for his wagon, hand it to
him,” he said, feeling that he would rather, at that moment, face the
devil himself than Mr. Bixby.

Half an hour later, Cynthia gave Mr. Bixby the envelope as he unhitched
his horse; and so deftly did Bijah slip it into his pocket, that he must
certainly have misjudged its contents. None of the loungers at Ephraim's
remarked the transaction.

If Jethro had indeed instructed Bijah to look after his flock at
Coniston, it was an ill-conditioned move, and some of the flock resented
it when they were quite sure that Bijah was climbing the notch road
toward Clovelly. The discussion (from which the storekeeper was
providentially omitted) was in full swing when the stage arrived, and
Lem Hallowell's voice silenced the uproar. It was Lem's boast that he
never had been and never would be a politician.

“Why don't you folks quit railin' against Jethro and do somethin'?” he
said. “Bije turns up here, and you all scatter like a flock of crows.
I'm tired of makin' complaints about that Brampton road, and to-day the
hull side of it give way, and put me in the ditch. Sure as the sun rises
to-morrow, I'm goin' to make trouble for Jethro.”

“What be you a-goin' to do, Lem?”

“Indict the town,” replied Lem, vigorously. “Who is the town? Jethro,
hain't he? Who has charge of the highways? Jethro Bass, Chairman of the
Selectmen. I've spoke to him, time and agin, about that piece, and
he hain't done nothin'. To-night I go to Harwich and git the court to
app'int an agent to repair that road, and the town'll hev to pay the
bill.”

The boldness of Lem's intention for the moment took away their breaths,
and then the awe-stricken hush which followed his declaration was broken
by the sound of Chester's fist hammering on the counter.

“That's the sperrit,” he cried; “I'll go along with you, Lem.”

“No, you won't,” said Lem, “you'll stay right whar you be.”

“Chester wants to git credit for the move,” suggested Sam Price, slyly.

“It's a lie, Sam Price,” shouted Chester. “What made you sneak off when
Bije Bixby come?”

“Didn't sneak off,” retorted Sam, indignantly, through his nose; “forgot
them eggs I left to home.”

“Sam,” said Lem, with a wink at Moses Hatch, “you hitch up your hoss and
fetch me over to Harwich to git that indictment. Might git a chance to
see that lady.”

“Wal, now, I wish I could, Lem, but my hoss is stun lame.”

There was a roar of laughter, during which Sam tried to look
unconcerned.

“Mebbe Rias'll take me over,” said Lem, soberly. “You hitch up, Rias?”

“He's gone,” said Joe Northcutt, “slid out the door when you was
speakin' to Sam.”

“Hain't none of you folks got spunk enough to carry me over to see the
jedge?” demanded Lem; “my horses ain't fit to travel to-night.” Another
silence followed, and Lem laughed contemptuously but good-naturedly, and
turned on his heel. “Guess I'll walk, then,” he said.

“You kin have my white hoss, Lem,” said Moses Hatch.

“All right,” said Lem; “I'll come round and hitch up soon's I git my
supper.”

An hour later, when Cynthia and her father and Millicent Skinner--who
condescended to assist in the work and cooking of Mr. Wetherell's
household--were seated at supper in the little kitchen behind the store,
the head and shoulders of the stage-driver were thrust in at the window,
his face shining from its evening application of soap and water. He was
making eyes at Cynthia.

“Want to go to Harwich, Will?” he asked.

William set his cup down quickly.

“You hain't afeard, be you?” he continued. “Most folks that hasn't went
West or died is afeard of Jethro Bass.”

“Daddy isn't afraid of him, and I'm not,” said Cynthia.

“That's right, Cynthy,” said Lem, leaning over and giving a tug to the
pigtail that hung down her back; “there hain't nothin' to be afeard of.”

“I like him,” said Cynthia; “he's very good to me.”

“You stick to him, Cynthy,” said the stage driver.

“Ready, Will?”

It may readily be surmised that Mr. Wetherell did not particularly wish
to make this excursion, the avowed object of which was to get Mr. Bass
into trouble. But he went, and presently he found himself jogging along
on the mountain road to Harwich. From the crest of Town's End ridge they
looked upon the western peaks tossing beneath a golden sky. The spell of
the evening's beauty seemed to have fallen on them both, and for a long
time Lem spoke not a word, and nodded smilingly but absently to the
greetings that came from the farm doorways.

“Will,” he said at last, “you acted sensible. There's no mite of use of
your gettin' mixed up in politics. You're too good for 'em.”

“Too good!” exclaimed the storekeeper.

“You're eddicated,” Lem replied, with a tactful attempt to cover up a
deficiency; “you're a gentleman, ef you do keep store.”

Lemuel apparently thought that gentlemen and politics were
contradictions. He began to whistle, while Wetherell sat and wondered
that any one could be so care-free on such a mission. The day faded, and
went out, and the lights of Harwich twinkled in the valley. Wetherell
was almost tempted to mention his trouble to this man, as he had been to
Ephraim: the fear that each might think he wished to borrow money held
him back.

“Jethro's all right,” Lem remarked, “but if he neglects the road, he's
got to stand for it, same's any other. I writ him twice to the capital,
and give him fair warning afore he went. He knows I hain't doin' of it
for politics. I've often thought,” Lem continued, “that ef some smart,
good woman could have got hold of him when he was young, it would have
made a big difference. What's the matter?”

“Have you room enough?”

“I guess I've got the hull seat,” said Lem. “As I was sayin', if some
able woman had married Jethro and made him look at things a little mite
different, he would have b'en a big man. He has all the earmarks. Why,
when he comes back to Coniston, them fellers'll hunt their holes like
rabbits, mark my words.”

“You don't think--”

“Don't think what?”

“I understand he holds the mortgages of some of them,” said Wetherell.

“Shouldn't blame him a great deal ef he did git tired and sell Chester
out soon. This thing happens regular as leap year.”

“Jethro Bass doesn't seem to frighten you,” said the storekeeper.

“Well,” said Lem, “I hain't afeard of him, that's so. For the life of
me, I can't help likin' him, though he does things that I wouldn't do
for all the power in Christendom. Here's Jedge Parkinson's house.”

Wetherell remained in the wagon while Lemuel went in to transact his
business. The judge's house, outlined in the starlight, was a modest
dwelling with a little porch and clambering vines, set back in its own
garden behind a picket fence. Presently, from the direction of the
lines of light in the shutters, came the sound of voices, Lem's deep
and insistent, and another, pitched in a high nasal key, deprecatory and
protesting. There was still another, a harsh one that growled something
unintelligible, and Wetherell guessed, from the fragments which he
heard, that the judge before sitting down to his duty was trying to
dissuade the stage driver from a step that was foolhardy. He guessed
likewise that Lem was not to be dissuaded. At length a silence followed,
then the door swung open, and three figures came down the illuminated
path.

“Like to make you acquainted with Jedge Abner Parkinson, Mr. Wetherell,
and Jim Irving. Jim's the sheriff of Truro County, and I guess the
jedge don't need any recommendation as a lawyer from me. You won't mind
stayin' awhile with the jedge while Jim and I go down town with the
team? You're both literary folks.”

Wetherell followed the judge into the house. He was sallow, tall
and spare and stooping, clean-shaven, with a hooked nose and bright
eyes--the face of an able and adroit man, and he wore the long black
coat of the politician-lawyer. The room was filled with books, and from
these Judge Parkinson immediately took his cue, probably through a fear
that Wetherell might begin on the subject of Lemuel's errand. However,
it instantly became plain that the judge was a true book lover, and
despite the fact that Lem's visit had disturbed him not a little, he
soon grew animated in a discussion on the merits of Sir Walter Scott,
paced the room, pitched his nasal voice higher and higher, covered his
table with volumes of that author to illustrate his meaning. Neither
of them heard a knock, and they both stared dumfounded at the man who
filled the doorway.

It was Jethro Bass!

He entered the room with characteristic unconcern, as if he had just
left it on a trivial errand, and without a “How do you do?” or a “Good
evening,” parted his coat tails, and sat down in the judge's armchair.
The judge dropped the volume of Scott on the desk, and as for Wetherell,
he realized for once the full meaning of the biblical expression of
a man's tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth; the gleam of one of
Jethro's brass buttons caught his eye and held it fascinated.

“Literary talk, Judge?” said Jethro. “D-don't mind me--go on.”

“Thought you were at the capital,” said the judge, reclaiming some of
his self-possession.

“Good many folks thought so,” answered Jethro, “g-good many folks.”

There was no conceivable answer to this, so the judge sat down with an
affectation of ease. He was a man on whom dignity lay heavily, and
was not a little ruffled because Wetherell had been a witness of
his discomfiture. He leaned back in his chair, then leaned forward,
stretching his neck and clearing his throat, a position in which he bore
a ludicrous resemblance to a turkey gobbler.

“Most through the Legislature?” inquired the judge.

“'Bout as common,” said Jethro.

There was a long silence, and, forgetful for the moment of his own
predicament, Wetherell found a fearful fascination in watching the
contortions of the victim whose punishment was to precede his. It had
been one of the delights of Louis XI to contemplate the movements of a
certain churchman whom he had had put in a cage, and some inkling of the
pleasure to be derived from this pastime of tyrants dawned on Wetherell.
Perhaps the judge, too, thought of this as he looked at “Quentin
Durward” on the table.

“I was just sayin' to Lem Hallowell,” began the judge, at last, “that I
thought he was a little mite hasty--”

“Er--indicted us, Judge?” said Jethro.

The judge and Wetherell heard the question with different emotions. Mr.
Parkinson did not seem astonished at the miracle which had put Jethro in
possession of this information, but heaved a long sigh of relief, as a
man will when the worst has at length arrived.

“I had to, Jethro--couldn't help it. I tried to get Hallowell to wait
till you come back and talk it over friendly, but he wouldn't listen;
said the road was dangerous, and that he'd spoken about it too often. He
said he hadn't anything against you.”

“Didn't come in to complain,” said Jethro, “didn't come in to complain.
Road is out of repair. W-what's the next move?”

“I'm sorry, Jethro--I swan I'm sorry.” He cleared his throat. “Well,” he
continued in his judicial manner, “the court has got to appoint an agent
to repair that road, the agent will present the bill, and the town will
have to pay the bill--whatever it is. It's too bad, Jethro, that you
have allowed this to be done.”

“You say you've got to app'int an agent?”

“Yes--I'm sorry--”

“Have you app'inted one?”

“No.”

“G-got any candidates?”

The judge scratched his head.

“Well, I don't know as I have.”

“Well, have you?”

“No,” said the judge.

“A-any legal objection to my bein' app'inted?” asked Jethro.

The judge looked at him and gasped. But the look was an involuntary
tribute of admiration.

“Well,” he said hesitatingly, “I don't know as there is, Jethro. No,
there's no legal objection to it.”

“A-any other kind of objection?” said Jethro.

The judge appeared to reflect.

“Well, no,” he said at last, “I don't know as there is.”

“Well, is there?” said Jethro, again.

“No,” said the judge, with the finality of a decision. A smile seemed to
be pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“Well, I'm a candidate,” said Jethro.

“Do you tell me, Jethro, that you want me to appoint you agent to fix
that road?”

“I-I'm a candidate.”

“Well,” said the judge, rising, “I'll do it.”

“When?” said Jethro, sitting still.

“I'll send the papers over to you within two or three days.

“O-ought to be done right away, Judge. Road's in bad shape.”

“Well, I'll send the papers over to you to-morrow.”

“How long--would it take to make out that app'intment--how long?”

“It wouldn't take but a little while.”

“I'll wait,” said Jethro.

“Do you want to take the appointment along with you to-night?” asked the
judge, in surprise.

“G-guess that's about it.”

Without a word the judge went over to his table, and for a while the
silence was broken only by the scratching of his pen.

“Er--interested in roads,--Will,--interested in roads?”

The judge stopped writing to listen, since it was now the turn of the
other victim.

“Not particularly,” answered Mr. Wetherell, whose throat was dry.

“C-come over for the drive--c-come over for the drive?”

“Yes,” replied the storekeeper, rather faintly.

“H-how's Cynthy?” said Jethro.

The storekeeper was too astonished to answer. At that moment there was
a heavy step in the doorway, and Lem Hallowell entered the room. He took
one long look at Jethro and bent over and slapped his hand on his knee,
and burst out laughing.

“So here you be!” he cried. “By Godfrey! ef you don't beat all outdoors,
Jethro. Wal, I got ahead of ye for once, but you can't say I didn't warn
ye. Come purty nigh bustin' the stage on that road today, and now I'm
a-goin' to hev an agent app'inted.”

“W-who's the agent?” said Jethro.

“We'll git one. Might app'int Will, there, only he don't seem to want to
get mixed up in it.”

“There's the agent,” cried the judge, holding out the appointment to
Jethro.

“Wh-what?” ejaculated Lem.

Jethro took the appointment, and put it in his cowhide wallet.

“Be you the agent?” demanded the amazed stage driver.

“C-callate to be,” said Jethro, and without a smile or another word to
any one he walked out into the night, and after various exclamations of
astonishment and admiration, the stage driver followed.

No one, indeed, could have enjoyed this unexpected coup of Jethro's more
than Lem himself, and many times on their drive homeward he burst into
loud and unexpected fits of laughter at the sublime conception of the
Chairman of the Selectmen being himself appointed road agent.

“Will,” said he, “don't you tell this to a soul. We'll have some fun out
of some of the boys to-morrow.”

The storekeeper promised, but he had an unpleasant presentiment that he
himself might be one of the boys in question.

“How do you suppose Jethro Bass knew you were going to indict the town?”
 he asked of the stage driver.

Lem burst into fresh peals of laughter; but this was something which he
did not attempt to answer.




CHAPTER X

It so happened that there was a certain spinster whom Sam Price had been
trying to make up his mind to marry for ten years or more, and it was
that gentleman's habit to spend at least one day in the month in Harwich
for the purpose of paying his respects. In spite of the fact that his
horse had been “stun lame” the night before, Mr. Price was able to start
for Harwich, via Brampton, very early the next morning. He was driving
along through Northcutt's woods with one leg hanging over the wheel,
humming through his nose what we may suppose to have been a love-ditty,
and letting his imagination run riot about the lady in question, when he
nearly fell out of his wagon. The cause of this was the sight of fat Tom
coming around a corner, with Jethro Bass behind him. Lem Hallowell
and the storekeeper had kept their secret so well that Sam, if he was
thinking about Jethro at all, believed him at that moment to be seated
in the Throne Room at the Pelican House, in the capital.

Mr. Price, however, was one of an adaptable nature, and by the time he
had pulled up beside Jethro he had recovered sufficiently to make a few
remarks on farming subjects, and finally to express a polite surprise at
Jethro's return.

“But you come a little mite late, hain't you, Jethro?” he asked finally,
with all of the indifference he could assume.

“H-how's that, Sam--how's that?”

“It's too bad,--I swan it is,--but Lem Hallowell rode over to Harwich
last night and indicted the town for that piece of road by the Four
Corners. Took Will Wetherell along with him.”

“D-don't say so!” said Jethro.

“I callate he done it,” responded Sam, pulling a long face. “The
court'll hev to send an agent to do the job, and I guess you'll hev to
foot the bill, Jethro.”

“C-court'll hev to app'int an agent?”

“I callate.”

“Er--you a candidate--Sam--you a candidate?”

“Don't know but what I be,” answered the usually wary Mr. Price.

“G-goin' to Harwich--hain't you?”

“Mebbe I be, and mebbe I hain't,” said Sam, not able to repress a
self-conscious snicker.

“M-might as well be you as anybody, Sam,” said Jethro, as he drove on.

It was not strange that the idea, thus planted, should grow in Mr.
Price's favor as he proceeded. He had been surprised at Jethro's
complaisance, and he wondered whether, after all, he had done well
to help Chester stir people up at this time. When he reached Harwich,
instead of presenting himself promptly at the spinster's house, he
went first to the office of Judge Parkinson, as became a prudent man of
affairs.

Perhaps there is no need to go into the details of Mr. Price's
discomfiture on the occasion of this interview. The judge was by nature
of a sour disposition, but he haw-hawed so loudly as he explained to Mr.
Price the identity of the road agent that the judge of probate in the
next office thought his colleague had gone mad. Afterward Mr. Price
stood for some time in the entry, where no one could see him, scratching
his head and repeating his favorite exclamation, “I want to know!” It
has been ascertained that he omitted to pay his respects to the spinster
on that day.

Cyamon Johnson carried the story back to Coniston, where it had the
effect of eliminating Mr. Price from local politics for some time to
come.

That same morning Chester Perkins was seen by many driving wildly about
from farm to farm, supposedly haranguing his supporters to make a
final stand against the tyrant, but by noon it was observed by those
naturalists who were watching him that his activity had ceased. Chester
arrived at dinner time at Joe Northcutt's, whose land bordered on the
piece of road which had caused so much trouble, and Joe and half a dozen
others had been at work there all morning under the road agent whom
Judge Parkinson had appointed. Now Mrs. Northcutt was Chester's sister,
a woman who in addition to other qualities possessed the only sense
of humor in the family. She ushered the unsuspecting Chester into the
kitchen, and there, seated beside Joe and sipping a saucer of very hot
coffee, was Jethro Bass himself. Chester halted in the doorway, his face
brick-red, words utterly failing him, while Joe sat horror-stricken,
holding aloft on his fork a smoking potato. Jethro continued to sip his
coffee.

“B-busy times, Chester,” he said, “b-busy times.”

Chester choked. Where were the burning words of denunciation which came
so easily to his tongue on other occasions? It is difficult to denounce
a man who insists upon drinking coffee.

“Set right down, Chester,” said Mrs. Northcutt, behind him.

Chester sat down, and to this day he cannot account for that action.
Once seated, habit asserted itself; and he attacked the boiled dinner
with a ferocity which should have been exercised against Jethro.

“I suppose the stores down to the capital is finer than ever, Mr. Bass,”
 remarked Mrs. Northcutt.

“So-so, Mis' Northcutt, so-so.”

“I was there ten years ago,” remarked Mrs. Northcutt, with a sigh of
reminiscence, “and I never see such fine silks and bonnets in my life.
Now I've often wanted to ask you, did you buy that bonnet with the
trembly jet things for Mis' Bass?”

“That bonnet come out full better'n I expected,” answered Jethro,
modestly.

“You have got taste in wimmin's fixin's, Mr. Bass. Strange? Now I
wouldn't let Joe choose my things for worlds.”

So the dinner progressed, Joe with his eyes on his plate, Chester
silent, but bursting with anger and resentment, until at last Jethro
pushed back his chair, and said good day to Mrs. Northcutt and walked
out. Chester got up instantly and went after him, and Joe, full of
forebodings, followed his brother-in-law! Jethro was standing calmly on
the grass plot, whittling a toothpick. Chester stared at him a moment,
and then strode off toward the barn, unhitched his horse and jumped in
his wagon. Something prompted him to take another look at Jethro, who
was still whittling.

“C-carry me down to the road, Chester--c-carry me down to the road?”
 said Jethro.

Joe Northcutt's knees gave way under him, and he sat down on a sugar
kettle. Chester tightened up his reins so suddenly that his horse
reared, while Jethro calmly climbed into the seat beside him and they
drove off. It was some time before Joe had recovered sufficiently to
arise and repair to the scene of operations on the road.

It was Joe who brought the astounding news to the store that evening.
Chester was Jethro's own candidate for senior Selectman! Jethro himself
had said so, that he would be happy to abdicate in Chester's favor, and
make it unanimous--Chester having been a candidate so many times, and
disappointed.

“Whar's Chester?” said Lem Hallowell.

Joe pulled a long face.

“Just come from his house, and he hain't done a lick of work sence noon
time. Jest sets in a corner--won't talk, won't eat--jest sets thar.”

Lem sat down on the counter and laughed until he was forced to brush
the tears from his cheeks at the idea of Chester Perkins being Jethro's
candidate. Where was reform now? If Chester were elected, it would be in
the eyes of the world as Jethro's man. No wonder he sat in a corner and
refused to eat.

“Guess you'll ketch it next, Will, for goin' over to Harwich with Lem,”
 Joe remarked playfully to the storekeeper, as he departed.

These various occurrences certainly did not tend to allay the uneasiness
of Mr. Wetherell. The next afternoon, at a time when a slack trade
was slackest, he had taken his chair out under the apple tree and
was sitting with that same volume of Byron in his lap--but he was
not reading. The humorous aspects of the doings of Mr. Bass did not
particularly appeal to him now; and he was, in truth, beginning to hate
this man whom the fates had so persistently intruded into his life.
William Wetherell was not, it may have been gathered, what may be called
vindictive. He was a sensitive, conscientious person whose life should
have been in the vale; and yet at that moment he had a fierce desire to
confront Jethro Bass and--and destroy him. Yes, he felt equal to that.

Shocks are not very beneficial to sensitive natures. William Wetherell
looked up, and there was Jethro Bass on the doorstep.

“G-great resource--readin'--great resource,” he remarked.

In this manner Jethro snuffed out utterly that passion to destroy,
and another sensation took its place--a sensation which made it very
difficult for William Wetherell to speak, but he managed to reply that
reading had been a great resource to him. Jethro had a parcel in his
hand, and he laid it down on the step beside him; and he seemed, for
once in his life, to be in a mood for conversation.

“It's hard for me to read a book,” he observed. “I own to it--it's a
little mite hard. H-hev to kind of spell it out in places. Hain't had
much time for readin'. But it's kind of pleasant to l'arn what other
folks has done in the world by pickin' up a book. T-takes your mind off
things--don't it?”

Wetherell felt like saying that his reading had not been able to do that
lately. Then he made the plunge, and shuddered as he made it.

“Mr. Bass--I--I have been waiting to speak to you about that mortgage.”

“Er--yes,” he answered, without moving his head, “er--about the
mortgage.”

“Mr. Worthington told me that you had bought it.”

“Yes, I did--yes, I did.”

“I'm afraid you will have to foreclose,” said Wetherell; “I cannot
reasonably ask you to defer the payments any longer.”

“If I foreclose it, what will you do?” he demanded abruptly.

There was but one answer--Wetherell would have to go back to the city
and face the consequences. He had not the strength to earn his bread on
a farm.

“If I'd a b'en in any hurry for the money--g-guess I'd a notified you,”
 said Jethro.

“I think you had better foreclose, Mr. Bass,” Wetherell answered; “I
can't hold out any hopes to you that it will ever be possible for me to
pay it off. It's only fair to tell you that.”

“Well,” he said, with what seemed a suspicion of a smile, “I don't know
but what that's about as honest an answer as I ever got.”

“Why did you do it?” Wetherell cried, suddenly goaded by another fear;
“why did you buy that mortgage?”

But this did not shake his composure.

“H-have a little habit of collectin' 'em,” he answered, “same as you do
books. G-guess some of 'em hain't as valuable.”

William Wetherell was beginning to think that Jethro knew something also
of such refinements of cruelty as were practised by Caligula. He
drew forth his cowhide wallet and produced from it a folded piece of
newspaper which must, Wetherell felt sure, contain the mortgage in
question.

“There's one power I always wished I had,” he observed, “the power
to make folks see some things as I see 'em. I was acrost the Water
to-night, on my hill farm, when the sun set, and the sky up thar above
the mountain was all golden bars, and the river all a-flamin' purple,
just as if it had been dyed by some of them Greek gods you're readin'
about. Now if I could put them things on paper, I wouldn't care a
haycock to be President. No, sir.”

The storekeeper's amazement as he listened to this speech may be
imagined. Was this Jethro Bass? If so, here was a side of him the
existence of which no one suspected. Wetherell forgot the matter in
hand.

“Why don't you put that on paper?” he exclaimed.

Jethro smiled, and made a deprecating motion with his thumb.

“Sometimes when I hain't busy, I drop into the state library at the
capital and enjoy myself. It's like goin' to another world without
any folks to bother you. Er--er--there's books I'd like to talk to you
about--sometime.”

“But I thought you told me you didn't read much, Mr. Bass?”

He made no direct reply, but unfolded the newspaper in his hand, and
then Wetherell saw that it was only a clipping.

“H-happened to run across this in a newspaper--if this hain't this
county, I wahn't born and raised here. If it hain't Coniston Mountain
about seven o'clock of a June evening, I never saw Coniston Mountain.
Er--listen to this.”

Whereupon he read, with a feeling which Wetherell had not supposed he
possessed, an extract: and as the storekeeper listened his blood began
to run wildly. At length Jethro put down the paper without glancing at
his companion.

“There's somethin' about that that fetches you spinnin' through the
air,” he said slowly. “Sh-showed it to Jim Willard, editor of the
Newcastle Guardian. Er--what do you think he said?”

“I don't know,” said Wetherell, in a low voice.

“Willard said, 'Bass, w-wish you'd find me that man. I'll give him five
dollars every week for a letter like that--er--five dollars a week.'”

He paused, folded up the paper again and put it in his pocket, took out
a card and handed it to Wetherell.

        James G. Willard, Editor.
         Newcastle Guardian.

“That's his address,” said Jethro. “Er--guess you'll know what to do
with it. Er--five dollars a week--five dollars a week.”

“How did you know I wrote this article?” said Wetherell, as the card
trembled between his fingers.

“K-knowed the place was Coniston seen from the 'east, knowed there
wahn't any one is Brampton or Harwich could have done it--g-guessed the
rest--guessed the rest.”

Wetherell could only stare at him like a man who, with the halter about
his neck, has been suddenly reprieved. But Jethro Bass did not appear to
be waiting for thanks. He cleared his throat, and had Wetherell not been
in such a condition himself, he would actually have suspected him of
embarrassment.

“Er--Wetherell?”

“Yes?”

“W-won't say nothin' about the mortgage--p-pay it when you can.”

This roused the storekeeper to a burst of protest, but he stemmed it.

“Hain't got the money, have you?”

“No--but--”

“If I needed money, d'ye suppose I'd bought the mortgage?”

“No,” answered the still bewildered Wetherell, “of course not.” There
he stuck, that other suspicion of political coercion suddenly rising
uppermost. Could this be what the man meant? Wetherell put his hand
to his head, but he did not dare to ask the question. Then Jethro Bass
fixed his eyes upon him.

“Hain't never mixed any in politics--hev you n-never mixed any?”

Wetherell's heart sank.

“No,” he answered.

“D-don't--take my advice--d-don't.”

“What!” cried the storekeeper, so loudly that he frightened himself.

“D-don't,” repeated Jethro, imperturbably.

There was a short silence, the storekeeper being unable to speak.
Coniston Water, at the foot of the garden, sang the same song, but it
seemed to Wetherell to have changed its note from sorrow to joy.

“H-hear things, don't you--hear things in the store?”

“Yes.”

“Don't hear 'em. Keep out of politics, Will, s-stick to store-keepin'
and--and literature.”

Jethro got to his feet and turned his back on the storekeeper and picked
up the parcel he had brought.

“C-Cynthy well?” he inquired.

“I--I'll call her,” said Wetherell, huskily. “She--she was down by the
brook when you came.”

But Jethro Bass did not wait. He took his parcel and strode down to
Coniston Water, and there he found Cynthia seated on a rock with her
toes in a pool.

“How be you, Cynthy?” said he, looking down at her.

“I'm well, Uncle Jethro,” said Cynthia.

“R-remembered what I told you to call me, hev you,” said Jethro, plainly
pleased. “Th-that's right. Cynthy?”

Cynthia looked up at him inquiringly.

“S-said you liked books--didn't you? S-said you liked books?”

“Yes, I do,” she replied simply, “very much.”

He undid the wrapping of the parcel, and there lay disclosed a book with
a very gorgeous cover. He thrust it into the child's lap.

“It's 'Robinson Crusoe'!” she exclaimed, and gave a little shiver of
delight that made ripples in the pool. Then she opened it--not without
awe, for William Wetherell's hooks were not clothed in this magnificent
manner. “It's full of pictures,” cried Cynthia. “See, there he is making
a ship!”

“Y-you read it, Cynthy?” asked Jethro, a little anxiously.

No, Cynthia hadn't.

“L-like it, Cynthy--l-like it?” said he, not quite so anxiously.

Cynthia looked up at him with a puzzled expression.

“F-fetched it up from the capital for you, Cynthy--for you.”

“For me!”

A strange thrill ran through Jethro Bass as he gazed upon the wonder and
delight in the face of the child.

“F-fetched it for you, Cynthy.”

For a moment Cynthia sat very still, and then she slowly closed the book
and stared at the cover again, Jethro looking down at her the while. To
tell the truth, she found it difficult to express the emotions which the
event had summoned up.

“Thank you--Uncle Jethro,” she said.

Jethro, however, understood. He had, indeed, never failed to understand
her from the beginning. He parted his coat tails and sat down on the
rock beside her, and very gently opened the book again, to the first
chapter.

“G-goin' to read it, Cynthy?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, and trembled again.

“Er--read it to me?”

So Cynthia read “Robinson Crusoe” to him while the summer afternoon wore
away, and the shadows across the pool grew longer and longer.




CHAPTER XI

Thus William Wetherell became established in Coniston, and was started
at last--poor man--upon a life that was fairly tranquil. Lem Hallowell
had once covered him with blushes by unfolding a newspaper in the
store and reading an editorial beginning: “We publish today a new
and attractive feature of the Guardian, a weekly contribution from a
correspondent whose modesty is to be compared only with his genius as a
writer. We are confident that the readers of our Raper will appreciate
the letter in another column signed 'W. W.'” And from that day William
was accorded much of the deference due to a litterateur which the fates
had hitherto denied him. Indeed, during the six years which we are about
to skip over so lightly, he became a marked man in Coniston, and it was
voted in towns meeting that he be intrusted with that most important of
literary labors, the Town History of Coniston.

During this period, too, there sprang up the strangest of intimacies
between him and Jethro Bass. Surely no more dissimilar men than 

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