nd 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