es, while Wetherell
pondered.

CONISTON

BOOK 2.

CHAPTER IX

When William Wetherell and Cynthia had reached the last turn in the road
in Northcutt's woods, quarter of a mile from Coniston, they met the nasal
Mr. Samuel Price driving silently in the other direction. The word
"silently" is used deliberately, because to Mr. Price appertained a
certain ghostlike quality of flitting, and to Mr. Price's horse and wagon
likewise. He drew up for a brief moment when he saw Wetherell.

"Wouldn't hurry back if I was you, Will."

"Why not?"

Mr. Price leaned out of the wagon.

"Bije has come over from Clovelly to spy around a little mite."

It was evident from Mr. Price's manner that he regarded the storekeeper
as a member of the reform party.

"What did he say, Daddy?" asked Cynthia, as Wetherell stood staring after
the flitting buggy in bewilderment.

"I haven't the faintest idea, Cynthia," answered her father, and they
walked on.

"Don't you know who 'Bije' is?

"No," said her father, "and I don't care."

It was almost criminal ignorance for a man who lived in that part of the
country not to know Bijah Bixby of Clovelly, who was paying a little
social visit to Coniston that day on his way home from the state
capital,--tending, as it were, Jethro's flock. Still, Wetherell must be
excused because he was an impractical literary man with troubles of his
own. But how shall we chronicle Bijah's rank and precedence in the Jethro
army, in which there are neither shoulder-straps nor annual registers? To
designate him as the Chamberlain of that hill Rajah, the Honorable Heth
Sutton, would not be far out of the way. The Honorable Heth, whom we all
know and whom we shall see presently, is the man of substance and of
broad acres in Clovelly: Bijah merely owns certain mortgages in that
town, but he had created the Honorable Heth (politically) as surely as
certain prime ministers we could name have created their sovereigns. The
Honorable Heth was Bijah's creation, and a grand creation he was, as no
one will doubt when they see him.

Bijah--as he will not hesitate to tell you--took Heth down in his pocket
to the Legislature, and has more than once delivered him, in certain
blocks of five and ten, and four and twenty, for certain considerations.
The ancient Song of Sixpence applies to Bijah, but his pocket was
generally full of proxies instead of rye, and the Honorable Heth was
frequently one of the four and