e 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 experi