with
a very gorgeous cover. He thrust it into the child's lap.

"It's 'Robinson Crusoe'!" she exclaimed, and gave a little shiver of
delight that made ripples in the pool. Then she opened it--not without
awe, for William Wetherell's hooks were not clothed in this magnificent
manner. "It's full of pictures," cried Cynthia. "See, there he is making
a ship!"

"Y-you read it, Cynthy?" asked Jethro, a little anxiously.

No, Cynthia hadn't.

"L-like it, Cynthy--l-like it?" said he, not quite so anxiously.

Cynthia looked up at him with a puzzled expression.

"F-fetched it up from the capital for you, Cynthy--for you."

"For me!"

A strange thrill ran through Jethro Bass as he gazed upon the wonder and
delight in the face of the child.

"F-fetched it for you, Cynthy."

For a moment Cynthia sat very still, and then she slowly closed the book
and stared at the cover again, Jethro looking down at her the while. To
tell the truth, she found it difficult to express the emotions which the
event had summoned up.

"Thank you--Uncle Jethro," she said.

Jethro, however, understood. He had, indeed, never failed to understand
her from the beginning. He parted his coat tails and sat down on the rock
beside her, and very gently opened the book again, to the first chapter.

"G-goin' to read it, Cynthy?"

"Oh, yes," she said, and trembled again.

"Er--read it to me?"

So Cynthia read "Robinson Crusoe" to him while the summer afternoon wore
away, and the shadows across the pool grew longer and longer.

CHAPTER XI

Thus William Wetherell became established in Coniston, and was started at
last--poor man--upon a life that was fairly tranquil. Lem Hallowell had
once covered him with blushes by unfolding a newspaper in the store and
reading an editorial beginning: "We publish today a new and attractive
feature of the Guardian, a weekly contribution from a correspondent whose
modesty is to be compared only with his genius as a writer. We are
confident that the readers of our Raper will appreciate the letter in
another column signed 'W. W.'" And from that day William was accorded
much of the deference due to a litterateur which the fates had hitherto
denied him. Indeed, during the six years which we are about to skip over
so lightly, he became a marked man in Coniston, and it was voted in towns
meeting that he be intrusted with that most important of literary labors,
the Town History of Coniston.

During this period, t