was often a little discursive, though there was reason for
it on this occasion, and Moses Hatch half closed his eyes and bowed his
head a little out of sheer habit at the sound of the minister's
voice. But he raised it suddenly at the next words. "I was in Brampton
yesterday, and saw Mr. Graves, who is on the prudential committee of
that district. You may not have heard that Miss Goddard has left. They
have not yet succeeded in filling her place, and I think it more than
likely that you can get it."

Cynthia glanced at Jethro, but the habit of years was so strong in him
that he gave no sign.

"Do you think so, Mr. Satterlee?" she said gratefully. "I had heard of
the place, and hoped for it, because it is near enough for me to spend
the Saturdays and Sundays with Uncle Jethro. And I meant to go to
Brampton tomorrow to see about it."

"I will go with you," said the minister; "I have business in Brampton
to-morrow." He did not mention that this was the business.

When at length they had all departed, Jethro rose and went about the
house making fast the doors, as was his custom, while Cynthia sat
staring through the bars at the dying embers in the stove. He knew now,
and it was inevitable that he should know, what she had made up her mind
to do. It had been decreed that she, who owed him everything, should be
made to pass this most dreadful of censures upon his whole life. Oh, the
cruelty of that decree!

How, she mused, would it affect him? Had the blow been so great that he
would relinquish those practices which had become a lifelong habit with
him? Would he (she caught her breath at this thought) would he abandon
that struggle with Isaac D. Worthington in which he was striving to
maintain the mastery of the state by those very practices? Cynthia
hated Mr. Worthington. The term is not too strong, and it expresses her
feeling. But she would have got down on her knees on the board floor
of the kitchen that very night and implored Jethro to desist from that
contest, if she could. She remembered how, in her innocence, she had
believed that the people had given Jethro his power,--in those days when
she was so proud of that very power,--now she knew that he had wrested
it from them. What more supreme sacrifice could he make than to
relinquish it! Ah, there was a still greater sacrifice that Jethro was
to make, had she known it.

He came and stood over her by the stove, and she looked up into his face
with these yearning