all arranged; Durgin was to give up the place to him in
a week, and he was to surrender it again when Jeff came back in the
spring. In the mean time things were to remain as they were; after he was
gone, they could all go and live at Lion's Head if they chose.

"We'll see," said Cynthia. "I've been thinking that might be the best
way, after all. I might not get a school, it's so late."

"That's so," her father assented. "I declare," he added, after a moment's
muse, "I felt sorry for the feller settin' up there alone, with nobody to
do for him but that old thing he's got in. She can't cook any more
than--" He desisted for want of a comparison, and said: "Such a lookin'
table, too."

"Do you think I better go and look after things a little?" Cynthia asked.

"Well, you no need to," said her father. He got down the planchette, and
labored with it, while his children returned to Frank's lessons.

"Dumn 'f I can make the thing work," he said to himself at last. "I can't
git any of 'em up. If Jackson was here, now!"

Thrice a day Cynthia went up to the hotel and oversaw the preparation of
Jeff's meals and kept taut the slack housekeeping of the old Irish woman
who had remained as a favor, after the hotel closed, and professed to
have lost the chance of a place for the winter by her complaisance. She
submitted to Cynthia's authority, and tried to make interest for an
indefinite stay by sudden zeal and industry, and the last days of Jeff in
the hotel were more comfortable than he openly recognized. He left the
care of the building wholly to Whitwell, and shut himself up in the old
farm parlor with the plans for a new hotel which he said he meant to put
up some day, if he could ever get rid of the old one. He went once to
Lovewell, where he renewed the insurance, and somewhat increased it; and
he put a small mortgage on the property. He forestalled the slow progress
of the knowledge of others' affairs, which, in the country, is as sure as
it is slow, and told Whitwell what he had done. He said he wanted the
mortgage money for his journey, and the insurance money, if he could have
the luck to cash up by a good fire, to rebuild with.

Cynthia seldom met him in her comings and goings, but if they met they
spoke on the terms of their boy and girl associations, and with no
approach through resentment or tenderness to the relation that was ended
between them. She saw him oftener than at any other time setting off on
the long tram