was a great man once more--a greater man
than ever; and he had, if the persistent rumors were true, accomplished
an almost incomprehensible feat, even for Jethro Bass. There was another
reason, too, why they stared at him. In all those twelve weeks of that
most trying of all sessions he had not once gone into the street, and
he had been less than ever common in the eyes of men. Twice a day he had
descended to the dining room for a simple meal--that was all; and fewer
had gained entrance to Room Number 7 this session than ever before.

There is a river that flows by the capital, a wide and gentle river
bordered by green meadows and fringed with willows; higher up, if you go
far enough, a forest comes down to the water on the western side. Jethro
walked through the hooded bridge, and up the eastern bank until he could
see the forest like a black band between the orange sky and the orange
river, and there he sat down upon a fallen log on the edge of the bank.
But Jethro was thinking of another scene,--of a granite-ribbed pasture
on Coniston Mountain that swings in limitless space, from either end of
which a man may step off into eternity. William Wetherell, in one of
his letters, had described that place as the Threshold of the Nameless
Worlds, and so it had seemed to Jethro in the years of his desolation.
He was thinking of it now, even as it had been in his mind that winter's
evening when Cynthia had come to Coniston and had surprised him with
that look of terrible loneliness on his face.

Yes, and he was thinking of Cynthia. When, indeed, had he not been
thinking of her? How many tunes had he rehearsed the events in the
tannery house--for they were the events of his life now. The triumphs
over his opponents and enemies fell away, and the pride of power. Such
had not been his achievements. She had loved him, and no man had reached
a higher pinnacle than that.

Why he had forfeited that love for vengeance, he could not tell. The
embers of a man's passions will suddenly burst into flame, and he will
fiddle madly while the fire burns his soul. He had avenged her as well
as himself; but had he avenged her, now that he held Isaac Worthington
in his power? By crushing him, had he not added to her trouble and her
sorrow? She had confessed that she loved Isaac Worthington's son, and
was not he (Jethro) widening the breach between Cynthia and the son by
crushing the father? Jethro had not thought of this. But he had thought
of