counted them
straight, and needed no town clerk to verify his figures. But when he
came to pronounce the vote, shame and sorrow and mortification overcame
him. Coniston, his native town, which he had served and revered, was
dishonored, and it was for him, Lysander Richardson, to proclaim her
disgrace. The deacon choked, and tears of bitterness stood in his eyes,
and there came a silence only broken by the surging of the sleet as he
rapped on the table.

"Seventy-five votes have been cast for Jethro Bass--sixty-three for Moses
Hatch. Necessary for a choice, seventy--and Jethro Bass is elected senior
Selectman."

The deacon sat down, and men say that a great sob shook him, while
Jacksonian Democracy went wild--not looking into future years to see what
they were going wild about. Jethro Bass Chairman of the Board of
Selectmen, in the honored place of Deacon Moses Hatch! Bourbon royalists
never looked with greater abhorrence on the Corsican adventurer and
usurper of the throne than did the orthodox in Coniston on this tanner,
who had earned no right to aspire to any distinction, and who by his
wiles had acquired the highest office in the town government. Fletcher
Bartlett in, as a leader of the irresponsible opposition, would have been
calamity enough. But Jethro Bass!

This man whom they had despised was the master mind who had organized and
marshalled the loose vote, was the author of that ticket, who sat in his
corner unmoved alike by the congratulations of his friends and the
maledictions of his enemies; who rose to take his oath of office as
unconcerned as though the house were empty, albeit Deacon Lysander could
scarcely get the words out. And then Jethro sat down again in his
chair--not to leave it for six and thirty years. From this time forth
that chair became a seat of power, and of dominion over a state.

Thus it was that Jock Hallowell's prophecy, so lightly uttered, came to
pass.

How the remainder of that Jacksonian ticket was elected, down to the very
hog-reeves, and amid what turmoil of the Democracy and bitterness of
spirit of the orthodox, I need not recount. There is no moral to the
story, alas--it was one of those things which inscrutable heaven
permitted to be done. After that dark town-meeting day some of those
stern old fathers became broken men, and it is said in Coniston that this
calamity to righteous government, and not the storm, gave to Priest Ware
his death-stroke.

CHAPTER VI