wife, and Cousin Ephraim, to talk about the war,
hobbling slowly up the stairs--for rheumatism had been added to that
trouble of the Wilderness bullet now, and Ephraim was getting along in
years; and Rias Richardson stole up in his carpet slippers; and Moses,
after his chores were done, and Amandy with her cakes and delicacies,
which he left untouched--though Amandy never knew it. Yes, and Jethro
came. Day by day he would come silently into the room, and sit silently
for a space, and go as silently out of it. The farms were neglected now
on Thousand Acre Hill. William Wetherell would take his hand, and speak
to him, but do no more than that.

There were times when Cynthia leaned over him, listening as he breathed
to know whether he slept or were awake. If he were not sleeping, he would
speak her name: he repeated it often in those days, as though the sound
of it gave him comfort; and he would fall asleep with it on his lips,
holding her hand, and thinking, perhaps, of that other Cynthia who had
tended and nursed and shielded him in other days. Then she would steal
down the stairs to Jethro on the doorstep: to Jethro who would sit there
for hours at a time, to the wonder and awe of his neighbors. Although
they knew that he loved the storekeeper as he loved no other man, his was
a grief that they could not understand.

Cynthia used to go to Jethro in the garden. Sorrow had brought them very
near together; and though she had loved him before, now he had become her
reliance and her refuge. The first time Cynthia saw him; when the worst
of the illness had passed and the strange and terrifying apathy had come,
she had hidden her head on his shoulder and wept there. Jethro kept that
coat, with the tear stains on it, to his dying day, and never wore it
again.

"Sometimes--sometimes I think if he hadn't gone to the capital, Cynthy,
this mightn't hev come," he said to her once.

"But the doctor said that didn't matter, Uncle Jethro," she answered,
trying to comfort him. She, too, believed that something had happened at
the capital.

"N-never spoke to you about anything there--n-never spoke to you,
Cynthia?"

"No, never," she said. "He--he hardly speaks at all, Uncle Jethro."

One bright morning after the sun had driven away the frost, when the
sumacs and maples beside Coniston Water were aflame with red, Bias
Richardson came stealing up the stairs and whispered something to
Cynthia.

"Dad," she said, laying down her bo