reen-gold in the late afternoon, and from the buggy-seat Cynthia looked
down upon a thousand purple hilltops and mountain peaks of another state.
The view aroused in the girl visions of the many wonders which life was
to hold, and she did not hear the sharp voice beside her until the woman
had spoken twice. Jethro came out in the middle of the conversation,
nodded to Mrs. Cuthbert, and drove off.

"Uncle Jethro," asked Cynthia, presently, "what is a mortgage?"

Jethro struck the horse with the whip, an uncommon action with him, and
the buggy was jerked forward sharply over the boulders.

"Er--who's b'en talkin' about mortgages, Cynthy?" he demanded.

"Mrs. Cuthbert said that when folks had mortgage held over them they had
to take orders whether they liked them or not. She said that Amos had to
do what you told him because there was a mortgage. That isn't so is it?"

Jethro did not speak. Presently Cynthia laid her hand over his.

"Mrs. Cuthbert is a spiteful woman," she said. "I know the reason why
people obey you--it's because you're so great. And Daddy used to tell me
so."

A tremor shook Jethro's frame and the hand on which hers rested, and all
the way down the mountain valleys to Coniston village he did not speak
again. But Cynthia was used to his silences, and respected them.

To Ephraim Prescott, who, as the days went on, found it more and more
difficult to sew harness on account of his rheumatism, Jethro was not
only a great man but a hero. For Cynthia was vaguely troubled at having
found one discontent. She was wont to entertain Ephraim on the days when
his hands failed him, when he sat sunning himself before his door; and
she knew that he was honest.

"Who's b'en talkin' to you, Cynthia?" he cried. "Why, Jethro's the
biggest man I know, and the best. I don't like to think where some of us
would have b'en if he hadn't given us a lift."

"But he has enemies, Cousin Eph," said Cynthia, still troubled. "What
great man hain't?" exclaimed the soldier. "Jethro's enemies hain't worth
thinkin' about."

The thought that Jethro had enemies was very painful to Cynthia, and she
wanted to know who they were that she might show them a proper contempt
if she met them. Lem Hallowell brushed aside the subject with his usual
bluff humor, and pinched her cheek and told her not to trouble her head;
Amanda Hatch dwelt upon the inherent weakness in the human race, and the
Rev. Mr. Satterlee faced the question once, during