nner's son,
and listening to the brief colloquies he had with other men at Jonah
Winch's store, when she went there to buy things for the parsonage; and
it seemed to her that Jock had not been altogether wrong, and that there
was in the man an indefinable but very compelling force. And when a woman
begins to admit that a man has force, her curiosity usually increases. On
one or two of these occasions Cynthia had been startled to find his eyes
fixed upon her, and though the feeling she had was closely akin to fear,
she found something distinctly pleasurable in it.

May came, and the pools dried up, the orchards were pink and white, the
birches and the maples were all yellow-green on the mountain sides
against the dark pines, and Cynthia was driving the minister's gig to
Brampton. Ahead of her, in the canon made by the road between the great
woods, strode an uncouth but powerful figure--coonskin cap, homespun
breeches tucked into boots, and all. The gig slowed down, and Cynthia
began to tremble with that same delightful fear. She knew it must be
wicked, because she liked it so much. Unaccountable thing! She felt all
akin to the nature about her, and her blood was coursing as the sap
rushes through a tree. She would not speak to him; of that she was sure,
and equally sure that he would not speak to her. The horse was walking
now, and suddenly Jethro Bass faced around, and her heart stood still.

"H-how be you, Cynthy?" he asked.

"How do you do, Jethro?"

A thrush in the woods began to sing a hymn, and they listened. After that
a silence, save for the notes of answering birds quickened by the song,
the minister's horse nibbling at the bushes. Cynthia herself could not
have explained why she lingered. Suddenly he shot a question at her.

"Where be you goin'?"

"To Brampton, to get Miss Lucretia to change this book," and she held it
up from her lap. It was a very large book.

"Wh-what's it about," he demanded.

"Napoleon Bonaparte."

"Who was be?"

"He was a very strong man. He began life poor and unknown, and fought his
way upward until he conquered the world."

"C-conquered the world, did you say? Conquered the world?"

"Yes."

Jethro pondered.

"Guess there's somethin' wrong about that book--somethin' wrong. Conquer
the United States?"

Cynthia smiled. She herself did not realize that we were not a part of
the world, then.

"He conquered Europe; where all the kings and queens are, and became a
king h