fe to say that Mr. Worthington understood.

CHAPTER XVI

There are certain instruments used by scientists so delicate that they
have to be wrapped in cotton wool and kept in ductless places, and so
sensitive that the slightest shock will derange them. And there are
certain souls which cannot stand the jars of life--souls created
to register thoughts and sentiments too fine for those of coarser
construction. Such was the soul of the storekeeper of Coniston. Whether
or not he was one of those immortalized in the famous Elegy, it is
not for us to say. A celebrated poet who read the letters to the
Guardian--at Miss Lucretia Penniman's request--has declared Mr.
Wetherell to have been a genius. He wrote those letters, as we know,
after he had piled his boxes and rolled his barrels into place; after
he had added up the columns in his ledger and recorded, each week, the
small but ever increasing deficit which he owed to Jethro Bass. Could
he have been removed from the barrels and the ledgers, and the debts
and the cares and the implications, what might we have had from his pen?
That will never be known.

We left him in the lobby of the Opera House, but he did not go in to see
the final act of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." He made his way, alone, back to
the hotel, slipped in by a side entrance, and went directly to his room,
where Cynthia found him, half an hour later, seated by the open window
in the dark.

"Aren't you well, Dad?" she asked anxiously. "Why didn't you come to see
the play?"

"I--I was detained Cynthia," he said. "Yes--I am well."

She sat down beside him and felt his forehead and his hands, and the
events of the evening which were on her lips to tell him remained
unspoken.

"You ought not to have left Coniston," she said; "the excitement is too
much for you. We will go back tomorrow."

"Yes, Cynthia, we will go back to-morrow."

"In the morning?"

"On the early train," said Wetherell, "and now you must go to sleep."

"I am glad," said Cynthia, as she kissed him good night. "I have enjoyed
it here, and I am grateful to Uncle Jethro for bringing us, but--but I
like Coniston best."

William Wetherell could have slept but a few hours. When he awoke the
sparrows were twittering outside, the fresh cool smells of the morning
were coming in at his windows, and the sunlight was just striking across
the roofs through the green trees of the Capitol Park. The remembrance
of a certain incident of the night befo