was normally expressionless.

He put up his wallet a little awkwardly, and held out his hand more
awkwardly.

"You be more of a feller than I thought for," he said, and strode off
through the drizzle toward Coniston. The painter walked slowly to the
kitchen, where Chester Perkins and his wife were sitting down to supper.

"Jethro got a mortgage on you, too?" asked Chester.

The artist had his reward, for when the picture was hung at length in the
little parlor of the tannery house it became a source of pride to
Coniston second only to Jethro himself.

CHAPTER II

Time passes, and the engines of the Truro Railroad are now puffing in and
out of the yards of Worthington's mills in Brampton, and a fine layer of
dust covers the old green stage which has worn the road for so many years
over Truro Gap. If you are ever in Brampton, you can still see the stage,
if you care to go into the back of what was once Jim Sanborn's livery
stable, now owned by Mr. Sherman of the Brampton House.

Conventions and elections had come and gone, and the Honorable Heth
Sutton had departed triumphantly to Washington, cheered by his neighbors
in Clovelly. Chamberlain Bixby was left in charge there, supreme. Who
could be more desirable as a member of Congress than Mr. Sutton, who had
so ably served his party (and Jethro) by holding the House against the
insurgents in the matter of the Truro Bill? Mr. Sutton was, moreover, a
gentleman, an owner of cattle and land, a man of substance whom lesser
men were proud to mention as a friend--a very hill-Rajah with stock in
railroads and other enterprises, who owed allegiance and paid tribute
alone to the Great Man of Coniston.

Mr. Sutton was one who would make himself felt even in the capital of the
United States--felt and heard. And he had not been long in the Halls of
Congress before he made a speech which rang under the very dome of the
Capitol. So said the Brampton and Harwich papers, at least, though rivals
and detractors of Mr. Sutton declared that they could find no matter in
it which related to the subject of a bill, but that is neither here nor
there. The oration began with a lengthy tribute to the resources and
history of his state, and ended by a declaration that the speaker was in
Congress at no man's bidding, but as the servant of the common people of
his district.

Under the lamp of the little parlor in the tannery house, Cynthia (who
has now arrived at the very serious age of