hed as he drew out a crumpled
letter.

"It don't take much gumption to run a store, does it, William? Guess you
could run a store, couldn't you?"

"I would try anything," said Wetherell.

"Well," said Ephraim' "there's the store at Coniston. With folks goin'
West, and all that, nobody seems to want it much." He looked at the
letter. "Lem Hallowell' says there hain't nobody to take it."

"Jonah Winch's!" exclaimed Wetherell.

"Jonah made it go, but that was before all this hullabaloo about
Temperance Cadets and what not. Jonah sold good rum, but now you can't
get nothin' in Coniston but hard cider and potato whiskey. Still, it's
the place for somebody without much get-up," and he eyed his cousin by
marriage. "Better come and try it, William."

So much for dreams! Instead of a successor to Irving and Emerson, William
Wetherell became a successor to Jonah Winch.

That journey to Coniston was full of wonder to Cynthia, and of wonder and
sadness to Wetherell, for it was the way his other Cynthia had come to
Boston. From the state capital the railroad followed the same deep valley
as the old coach road, but ended at Truro, and then they took stage over
Truro Pass for Brampton, where honest Ephraim awaited them and their
slender luggage with a team. Brampton, with its wide-shadowed green, and
terrace-steepled church; home once of the Social Library and Lucretia
Penniman, now famous; home now of Isaac Dudley Worthington, whose great
mills the stage driver had pointed out to them on Coniston Water as they
entered the town.

Then came a drive through the cool evening to Coniston, Ephraim showing
them landmarks. There was Deacon Lysander's house, where little Rias
Richardson lived now; and on that slope and hidden in its forest nook,
among the birches and briers, the little schoolhouse where Cynthia had
learned to spell; here, where the road made an aisle in the woods, she
had met Jethro. The choir of the birds was singing an evening anthem now
as then, to the lower notes of Coniston Water, and the moist, hothouse
fragrance of the ferns rose from the deep places.

At last they came suddenly upon the little hamlet of Coniston itself.
There was the flagpole and the triangular green, scene of many a muster;
Jonah Winch's store, with its horse block and checker-paned windows, just
as Jonah had left it; Nathan Bass's tannery shed, now weather-stained and
neglected, for Jethro lived on Thousand Acre Hill now; the Prescott
hou