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
fai