mandy with her cakes and
delicacies, which he left untouched--though Amandy never knew it. Yes,
and Jethro came. Day by day he would come silently into the room, and
sit silently for a space, and go as silently out of it. The farms were
neglected now on Thousand Acre Hill. William Wetherell would take his
hand, and speak to him, but do no more than that.

There were times when Cynthia leaned over him, listening as he breathed
to know whether he slept or were awake. If he were not sleeping, he
would speak her name: he repeated it often in those days, as though the
sound of it gave him comfort; and he would fall asleep with it on his
lips, holding her hand, and thinking, perhaps, of that other Cynthia
who had tended and nursed and shielded him in other days. Then she would
steal down the stairs to Jethro on the doorstep: to Jethro who would
sit there for hours at a time, to the wonder and awe of his neighbors.
Although they knew that he loved the storekeeper as he loved no other
man, his was a grief that they could not understand.

Cynthia used to go to Jethro in the garden. Sorrow had brought them very
near together; and though she had loved him before, now he had become
her reliance and her refuge. The first time Cynthia saw him; when the
worst of the illness had passed and the strange and terrifying apathy
had come, she had hidden her head on his shoulder and wept there. Jethro
kept that coat, with the tear stains on it, to his dying day, and never
wore it again.

"Sometimes--sometimes I think if he hadn't gone to the capital, Cynthy,
this mightn't hev come," he said to her once.

"But the doctor said that didn't matter, Uncle Jethro," she answered,
trying to comfort him. She, too, believed that something had happened at
the capital.

"N-never spoke to you about anything there--n-never spoke to you,
Cynthia?"

"No, never," she said. "He--he hardly speaks at all, Uncle Jethro."

One bright morning after the sun had driven away the frost, when the
sumacs and maples beside Coniston Water were aflame with red, Bias
Richardson came stealing up the stairs and whispered something to
Cynthia.

"Dad," she said, laying down her book, "it's Mr. Merrill. Will you see
him?"

William Wetherell gave her a great fright. He started up from his
pillows, and seized her wrist with a strength which she had not thought
remained in his fingers.

"Mr. Merrill!" he cried--"Mr. Merrill here!"

"Yes," answered Cynthia, agitatedly,