ll," answered Lem; "you git him right into the
stage, Cynthy, I won't be long. Hurry them things off, Tom," he called,
and himself seized a huge crate from the back of the coach and flung it
on his shoulder. He had his cargo on in a jiffy, clucked to his horses,
and they turned into the familiar road to Coniston just as the sun was
dipping behind the south end of the mountain.

"They'll be surprised some, and disappointed some," said Lem, cheerily;
"they was kind of plannin' a little celebration when you come back,
Will--you and Cynthy. Amandy Hatch was a-goin' to bake a cake, and the
minister was callatin' to say some word of welcome. Wahn't goin' to be
anything grand--jest homelike. But you was right to come if you was
tuckered. I guess Cynthy fetched you. Rias he kep' store and done it
well,--brisker'n I ever see him, Rias was. Wait till I put some of them
things back, and make you more comfortable, Will."

He moved a few parcels and packages from Wetherell's feet and glanced at
Cynthia as he did so. The mountain cast its vast blue shadow over forest
and pasture, and above the pines the white mist was rising from Coniston
Water--rising in strange shapes. Lem's voice seemed to William Wetherell
to have given way to a world-wide silence, in the midst of which he
sought vainly for Cynthia and the stage driver. Most extraordinary of
all, out of the silence and the void came the checker-paned windows of
the store at Coniston, then the store itself, with the great oaks bending
over it, then the dear familiar faces,--Moses and Amandy, Eph Prescott
limping toward them, and little Rias Richardson in an apron with a scoop
shovel in his hand, and many others. They were not smiling at the
storekeeper's return--they looked very grave. Then somebody lifted him
tenderly from the stage and said:--

"Don't you worry a mite, Cynthy. Jest tuckered, that's all."

William Wetherell was "just tuckered." The great Dr. Coles, authority on
pulmonary troubles, who came all the way from Boston, could give no
better verdict than that. It was Jethro Bass who had induced Dr. Coles to
come to Coniston--much against the great man's inclination, and to the
detriment of his patients: Jethro who, on receiving Cynthia's note, had
left the capital on the next train and had come to Coniston, and had at
once gone to Boston for the specialist.

"I do not know why I came," said the famous physician to Dr. Abraham
Rowell of Tarleton, "I never shall know.