r the hills to consult with a bigger jackal, his
master. As a result, two days before March town-meeting day, Mr. Bijah
Bixby paid a visit to the Harwich bank and went among certain Coniston
farmers looking over the sheep, his clothes bulging out in places when he
began, and seemingly normal enough when he had finished. History repeats
itself, even among lions and jackals. Thirty-six years before there had
been a town-meeting in Coniston and a surprise. Established Church,
decent and orderly selectmen and proceedings had been toppled over that
day, every outlying farm sending its representative through the sleet to
do it. And now retribution was at hand. This March-meeting day was mild,
the grass showing a green color on the south slopes where the snow had
melted, and the outlying farmers drove through mud-holes up to the axles.
Drove, albeit, in procession along the roads, grimly enough, and the
sheds Jock Hallowell had built around the meeting-house could not hold
the horses; they lined the fences and usurped the hitching posts of the
village street, and still they came. Their owners trooped with muddy
boots into the meeting-house, and when the moderator rapped for order the
Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, Jethro Bass, was not in his place;
never, indeed, would be there again. Six and thirty years he had been
supreme in that town--long enough for any man. The beams and king posts
would know him no more. Mr. Amos Cuthbert was elected Chairman, not
without a gallant and desperate but unsupported fight of a minority led
by Mr. Jake Wheeler, whose loyalty must be taken as a tribute to his
species. Farmer Cuthbert was elected, and his mortgage was not
foreclosed! Had it been, there was more money in the Harwich bank.

There was no telegraph to Coniston in these days, and so Mr. Sam Price,
with his horse in a lather, might have been seen driving with unseemly
haste toward Brampton, where in due time he arrived. Half an hour later
there was excitement at Newcastle, sixty-five miles away, in the office
of the Guardian, and the next morning the excitement had spread over the
whole state.

Jethro Bass was dethroned in Coniston--discredited in his own town!

And where was Jethro? Did his heart ache, did he bow his head as he
thought of that supremacy, so hardly won, so superbly held, gone forever?
Many were the curious eyes on the tannery house that day, and for days
after, but its owner gave no signs of concern. He read an