g after the sky had whitened and the stars had
changed from gold to silver and gone out, and the sunlight had begun to
glance upon the green leaves of the park. Perhaps he was thinking of the
life he had lived, which was spent now: of the men he had ruled, of the
victories he had gained from that place which would know him no more. He
had won the last and the greatest of his victories there, compared to
which the others had indeed been as vanities. Perhaps he looked back over
the highway of his life and thought of the woman whom he had loved, and
wondered what it had been if she had trod it by his side. Who will judge
him? He had been what he had been; and as the Era was, so was he. Verily,
one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh.

When Mr. Isaac Worthington arrived at Mr. Duncan's house, where he was
staying, at three o'clock in the morning, he saw to his surprise light
from the library windows lying in bars across the lawn under the trees.
He found Mr. Duncan in that room with Somers, his son, who had just
returned from a seaside place, and they were discussing a very grave
event. Miss Janet Duncan had that day eloped with a gentleman who--to
judge from the photograph Somers held--was both handsome and
romantic-looking. He had long hair and burning eyes, and a title not to
be then verified, and he owned a castle near some place on the peninsula
of Italy not on the map.

CHAPTER XIX

We are back in Brampton, owning, as we do, an annual pass over the Truro
Railroad. Cynthia has been there all the summer, and as it is now the
first of September, her school has begun again. I do not by any means
intend to imply that Brampton is not a pleasant place to spend the
summer: the number of its annual visitors is a refutation of that; but to
Cynthia the season had been one of great unhappiness. Several times Lem
Hallowell had stopped the stage in front of Ephraim's house to beg her to
go to Coniston, and Mr. Satterlee had come himself; but she could not
have borne to be there without Jethro. Nor would she go to Boston, though
urged by Miss Lucretia; and Mrs. Merrill and the girls had implored her
to join them at a seaside place on the Cape.

Cynthia had made a little garden behind Ephraim's house, and she spent
the summer there with her flowers and her books, many of which Lem had
fetched from Coniston. Ephraim loved to sit there of an evening and smoke
his pipe and chat with Ezra Graves and the neighb