the revenge
would fall on other shoulders than Mr. Duncan's. And when Miss Sadler
proceeded to read the clippings, her hair would have stood on end with
horror had it not been so efficiently plastered down. Miss Sadler seized
her pen, and began a letter to Mrs. Merrill. Miss Sadler's knowledge of
the proprieties--together with other qualifications--had made her school
what it was. No Cynthia Wetherells had ever before entered its sacred
portals, or should again.

The first of these clippings was the article containing the arraignment
of Jethro Bass which Mr. Merrill had shown to his wife, and which had
been the excuse for Miss Penniman's call. The second was one which Mr.
Duncan had clipped from the Newcastle Guardian of the day before,
and gave, from Mr. Worthington's side, a very graphic account of the
conflict which was to tear the state asunder. The railroads were tired
of paying toll to the chief of a band of thieves and cutthroats, to a
man who had long throttled the state which had nourished him, to--in
short,--to Jethro Bass. Miss Sadler was not much interested in the
figures and metaphors of political compositions. Right had found
a champion--the article continued--in Mr. Isaac D. Worthington of
Brampton, president of the Truro Road and owner of large holdings
elsewhere. Mr. Worthington, backed by other respectable property
interests, would fight this monster of iniquity to the death, and
release the state from his thraldom. Jethro Bass, the article alleged,
was already about his abominable work--had long been so--as in mockery
of that very vigilance which is said to be the price of liberty. His
agents were busy in every town of the state, seeing to it that the
slaves of Jethro Bass should be sent to the next legislature.

And what was this system which he had built up among these rural
communities? It might aptly be called the System of Mortgages. The
mortgage--dread name for a dreadful thing--was the chief weapon of the
monster. Even as Jethro Bass held the mortgages of Coniston and Tarleton
and round about, so his lieutenants held mortgages in every town and
hamlet of the state, What was a poor farmer to do--? His choice was not
between right and wrong, but between a roof over the heads of his wife
and children and no roof. He must vote for the candidate of Jethro Bass
end corruption or become a homeless wanderer. How the gentleman and his
other respectable backers were to fight the system the article did n