ty. And then had
come the definite news that Mr. Worthington was beaten, a local
representative having arrived straight from the rotunda. Cynthia
overheard Lem Hallowell telling it to Ephraim, and she could not for the
life of her help rejoicing, though she despised herself for it. Isaac
Worthington was humbled now, and Jethro had humbled him to avenge her.
Despite her grief over his return to that life, there was something
to compel her awe and admiration in the way he had risen and done this
thing after men had fallen from him. Her mother had had something of
these same feelings, without knowing why.

People who had nothing but praise for him before were saying hard things
about Isaac Worthington that night. When the baron is defeated, the
serfs come out of their holes in the castle rock and fling their curses
across the moat. Cynthia slept but little, and was glad when the day
came to take her to her scholars, to ease her mind of the thoughts which
tortured it.

And then, when she stopped at the post-office to speak to Ephraim on
her way homeward in the afternoon, she heard men talking behind the
partition, and she stood, as one stricken, listening beside the window.
Other tidings had come in the shape of a telegram. The first rumor
had been false. Brampton had not yet received the details, but the
Consolidation Bill had gone into the House that morning, and would be
a law before the week was out. A part of it was incomprehensible to
Cynthia, but so much she had understood. She did not wait to speak to
Ephraim, and she was going out again when a man rushed past her and
through the partition door. Cynthia paused instinctively, for she
recognized him as one of the frequenters of the station and a bearer of
news.

"Jethro's come home, boys," he shouted; "come in on the four o'clock,
and went right off to Coniston. Guess he's done for, this time, for
certain. Looks it. By Godfrey, he looks eighty! Callate his day's over,
from the way the boys talked on the train."

Cynthia lingered to hear no more, and went out, dazed, into the
September sunshine: Jethro beaten, and broken, and gone to Coniston.
Resolution came to her as she walked. Arriving home, she wrote a little
note and left it on the table for Ephraim; and going out again, ran by
the back lane to Mr. Sherman's livery stable behind the Brampton House,
and in half an hour was driving along that familiar road to Coniston,
alone; for she had often driven Jethro's