rry. Guess I'll hev to go back to the
kit, now. What's to become of the old pensioner, Cynthy?"

"The old pensioner needn't worry," said Cynthia.

Then drove up Silas the Silent, with Bob's buggy and his black trotters.
All of Brampton might see them now; and all of Brampton did see them.
Silas got out,--his presence not being required,--and Cynthia was helped
in, and Bob got in beside her, and away they went, leaving Ephraim
waving his stick after them from the doorstep.

It is recorded against the black trotters that they made very poor time
to Coniston that day, though I cannot discover that either of them
was lame. Lem Hallowell, who was there nearly an hour ahead of them,
declares that the off horse had a bunch of branches in his mouth.
Perhaps Bob held them in on account of the scenery that September
afternoon. Incomparable scenery! I doubt if two lovers of the
renaissance ever wandered through a more wondrous realm of pleasance--to
quote the words of the poet. Spots in it are like a park, laid out by
that peerless landscape gardener, nature: dark, symmetrical pine trees
on the sward, and maples in the fulness of their leaf, and great oaks on
the hillsides, and, coppices; and beyond, the mountain, the evergreens
massed like cloud-shadows on its slopes; and all-trees and coppice and
mountain--flattened by the haze until they seemed woven in the softest
of blues and blue greens into one exquisite picture of an ancient
tapestry. I, myself, have seen these pictures in that country, and
marvelled.

So they drove on through that realm, which was to be their realm,
and came all too soon to Coniston green. Lem Hallowell had spread the
well-nigh incredible news, that Cynthia Wetherell was to marry the son
of the mill-owner and railroad president of Brampton, and it seemed to
Cynthia that every man and woman and child of the village was gathered
at the store. Although she loved them, every one, she whispered
something to Bob when she caught sight of that group on the platform,
and he spoke to the trotters. Thus it happened that they flew by, and
were at the tannery house before they knew it; and Cynthia, all unaided,
sprang out of the buggy and ran in, alone. She found Jethro sitting
outside of the kitchen door with a volume on his knee, and she saw that
the print of it was large, and she knew that the book was "Robinson
Crusoe."

Cynthia knelt down on the grass beside him and caught his hands in hers.

"Uncle Jethro