of moments she had been his!

So he stared at the picture as it lay in the palm of his hand, and forgot
him who had been her husband. But at length he started, as from a dream,
and gave it back to Wetherell, who was watching him. Her name had never
been mentioned between the two men, and yet she had been the one woman in
the world to both.

"It is strange," said William Wetherell, "it is strange that I should
have had but two friends in my life, and that she should have been one
and you the other. She found me destitute and brought me back to life and
married me, and cared for me until she died. And after that--you cared
for me."

"You--you mustn't think of that, Will, 'twahn't much what I did--no more
than any one else would hev done!"

"It was everything," answered the storekeeper, simply; "each of you came
between me and destruction. There is something that I have always meant
to tell you, Jethro,--something that it may be a comfort for you to know.
Cynthia loved you."

Jethro Bass did not answer. He got up and stood in the window, looking
out.

"When she married me," Wetherell continued steadily, "she told me that
there was one whom she had never been able to drive from her heart. And
one summer evening, how well I recall it!--we were walking under the
trees on the Mall and we met my old employer, Mr. Judson, the jeweller.
He put me in mind of the young countryman who had come in to buy a
locket, and I asked her if she knew you. Strange that I should have
remembered your name, wasn't it? It was then that she led me to a bench
and confessed that you were the man whom she could not forget. I used to
hate you then--as much as was in me to hate. I hated and feared you when
I first came to Coniston. But now I can tell you--I can even be happy in
telling you."

Jethro Bass groaned. He put his hand to his throat as though he were
stifling. Many, many years ago he had worn the locket there. And now? Now
an impulse seized him, and he yielded to it. He thrust his hand in his
coat and drew out a cowhide wallet, and from the wallet the oval locket
itself. There it was, tarnished with age, but with that memorable
inscription still legible,--"Cynthy, from Jethro"; not Cynthia, but
Cynthy. How the years fell away as he read it! He handed it in silence to
the storekeeper, and in silence went to the window again. Jethro Bass was
a man who could find no outlet for his agony in speech or tears.

"Yes," said Wetherell, "I th