pened
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