Could she have borne to wait
for him?

After that Lem gave it up. He had satisfied himself as to his vocal
powers, but he had not the courage even to whistle. The journey to
Coniston was faster in the winter, and at the next turn of the road the
little village came into view. There it was, among the snows. The pain in
Cynthia's heart, so long benumbed, quickened when she saw it. How write
of the sharpness of that pain to those who have never known it? The sight
of every gable brought its agony,--the store with the checker-paned
windows, the harness shop, the meeting-house, the white parsonage on its
little hill. Rias Richardson ran out of the store in his carpet slippers,
bareheaded in the cold, and gave one shout. Lem heeded him not; did not
stop there as usual, but drove straight to the tannery house and pulled
up under the butternut tree. Milly Skinner ran out on the porch, and gave
one long look, and cried:--

"Good Lord, it's Cynthy!"

"Where's Jethro?" demanded Lem.

Milly did not answer at once. She was staring at Cynthia.

"He's in the tannery shed," she said, "choppin' wood." But still she kept
her eyes on Cynthia's face. "I'll fetch him."

"No," said Cynthia, "I'll go to him there."

She took the path, leaving Millicent with her mouth open, too amazed to
speak again, and yet not knowing why.

In the tannery shed! Would Jethro remember what happened there almost six
and thirty years before? Would he remember how that other Cynthia had
come to him there, and what her appeal had been?

Cynthia came to the doors. One of these was open now--both had been
closed that other evening against the storm of sleet--and she caught a
glimpse of him standing on the floor of chips and bark--tan-bark no more.
Cynthia caught a glimpse of him, and love suddenly welled up into her
heart as waters into a spring after a drought. He had not seen her, not
heard the sound of the sleigh-bells. He was standing with his foot upon
the sawbuck and the saw across his knee, he was staring at the woodpile,
and there was stamped upon his face a look which no man or woman had ever
seen there, a look of utter loneliness and desolation, a look as of a
soul condemned to wander forever through the infinite, cold spaces
between the worlds--alone.

Cynthia stopped at sight of it. What had been her misery and affliction
compared to this? Her limbs refused her, though she knew not whether she
would have fled or rushed into his arms. How long