many hours fell into a
dreamless sleep of sheer exhaustion.

The days passed, and the weeks; the snow ran from the brown fields, and
melted at length even in the moist crotches under the hemlocks of the
northern slopes; the robin and bluebird came, the hillsides were mottled
with exquisite shades of green, and the scent of fruit blossom and balm
of Gilead was in the air. June came as a maiden and grew into womanhood.
But Jethro Bass did not return to Coniston.

CHAPTER XVII

The legends which surround the famous war which we are about to touch
upon are as dim as those of Troy or Tuscany. Decorous chronicles and
biographies and monographs and eulogies exist, bound in leather and
stamped in gold, each lauding its own hero: chronicles written in really
beautiful language, and high-minded and noble, out of which the heroes
come unstained. Horatius holds the bridge, and not a dent in his armor;
and swims the Tiber without getting wet or muddy. Castor and Pollux fight
in the front rank at Lake Regillus, in the midst of all that gore and
slaughter, and emerge all white and pure at the end of the day--but they
are gods.

Out of the classic wars to which we have referred sprang the great Roman
Republic and Empire, and legend runs into authentic and written history.
Just so, parva componere magnis, out of the cloud-wrapped conflicts of
the five railroads of which our own Gaul is composed, emerged one
imperial railroad, authentically and legally written down on the statute
books, for all men to see. We cannot go behind that statute except to
collect the legends and write homilies about the heroes who held the
bridges.

If we were not in mortal terror of the imperial power, and a little
fearful, too, of tiring our readers, we would write out all the legends
we have collected of this first fight for consolidation, and show the
blood, too.

In the statute books of a certain state may be found a number of laws
setting forth the various things that a railroad or railroads may do, and
on the margin of these pages is invariably printed a date, that being the
particular year in which these laws were passed. By a singular
coincidence it is the very year at which we have now arrived in our
story. We do not intend to give a map of the state, or discuss the merits
or demerits of the consolidation of the Central and the Northwestern and
the Truro railroads. Such discussions are not the province of a novelist,
and may all be found