mind, and led the way up the steep stairs to the chamber over the roofs
where Wetherell and Cynthia had lived and hoped and worked together;
where he had written those pages by which, with the aid of her loving
criticism, he had thought to become famous. The room was as bare now as
it had been then, and Ephraim, poking his stick through a hole in the
carpet, ventured the assertion that even that had not been changed.
Jethro, staring out over the chimney tops, passed his hand across his
eyes. Cynthia Ware had come to this!

"I found him right here in that bed," Ephraim was saying, and he poked
the bottom boards, too. "The same bed. Had a shack when I saw him.
Callate he wouldn't have lived two months if the war hadn't bust up and
I hadn't come along."

"Oh, Cousin Eph!" exclaimed Cynthia.

The old soldier turned and saw that there were tears in her eyes. But,
stranger than that, Cynthia saw that there were tears in his own.
He took her gently by the arm and led her down the stairs again, she
supporting him, and Jethro following.

That same morning, Jethro, whose memory was quite as good as Ephraim's,
found a little shop tucked away in Cornhill which had been miraculously
spared in the advance of prosperity. Mr. Judson's name, however, was
no longer in quaint lettering over the door. Standing before it, Jethro
told the story in his droll way, of a city clerk and a country bumpkin,
and Cynthia and Ephraim both laughed so heartily that the people who
were passing turned round to look at them and laughed too. For the three
were an unusual group, even in Boston. It was not until they were seated
at dinner in the hotel, Ephraim with his napkin tucked under his chin,
that Jethro gave them the key to the characters in this story.

"And who was the locket for, Uncle Jethro?" demanded Cynthia.

Jethro, however, shook his head, and would not be induced to tell.

They were still so seated when Cynthia perceived coming toward them
through the crowded dining roam a merry, middle-aged gentleman with a
bald head. He seemed to know everybody in the room, for he was kept busy
nodding right and left at the tables until he came to theirs. He was Mr.
Merrill who had come to see her father in Coniston, and who had spoken
so kindly to her on that occasion.

"Well, well, well," he said; "Jethro, you'll be the death of me yet.
'Don't write-send,' eh? Well, as long as you sent word you were here, I
don't complain. So you licked 'em again,