er all. When Cynthia
was alone with Ephraim she often read to him,--generally from books of
a martial flavor,--and listened with an admirable hypocrisy to certain
narratives which he was in the habit of telling.

They never spoke of Jethro. Ephraim was not a casuist, and his sense of
right and wrong came largely through his affections. It is safe to
say that he never made an analysis of the sorrow which he knew was
afflicting the girl, but he had had a general and most sympathetic
understanding of it ever since the time when Jethro had gone back to the
capital; and Ephraim never brought home his Guardian or his Clarion now,
but read them at the office, that their contents might not disturb her.

No wonder that Cynthia was unhappy. The letters came, almost every day,
with the postmark of the town in New Jersey where Mr. Broke's locomotive
works were; and she answered them now (but oh, how scrupulously!),
though not every day. If the waters of love rose up through the grains
of sand, it was, at least, not Cynthia's fault. Hers were the letters of
a friend. She was reading such and such a book--had he read it? And he
must not work too hard. How could her letters be otherwise when Jethro
Bass, her benefactor, was at the capital working to defeat and perhaps
to ruin Bob's father? when Bob's father had insulted and persecuted her?
She ought not to have written at all; but the lapses of such a heroine
are very rare, and very dear.

Yes, Cynthia's life was very bitter that summer, with but little hope
on the horizon of it. Her thoughts were divided between Bob and Jethro.
Many a night she lay awake resolving to write to Jethro, even to go to
him, but when morning came she could not bring herself to do so. I do
not think it was because she feared that he might believe her appeal
would be made in behalf of Bob's father. Knowing Jethro as she did,
she felt that it would be useless, and she could not bear to make it in
vain; if the memory of that evening in the tannery shed would not serve,
nothing would serve. And again--he had gone to avenge her.

It was inevitable that she should hear tidings from the capital. Isaac
Worthington's own town was ringing with it. And as week after week
of that interminable session went by, the conviction slowly grew
upon Brampton that its first citizen had been beaten by Jethro Bass.
Something of Mr. Worthington's affairs was known: the mills, for
instance, were not being run to their full capaci