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 experience that we cannot discover who has incited them. All
the unattached people in the town seem to have been organized." M