Twice Cynthia, during the week that followed, got halfway down the slope of the parsonage hill, the book under her arm, on her way to the tannery; twice went back, tears of humiliation and self-pity in her eyes at the thought that she should make advances to a man, and that man the tanner’s son.  Her household work done, a longing for further motion seized her, and she walked out under the maples of the village street.  Let it be understood that Coniston was a village, by courtesy, and its shaded road a street.  Suddenly, there was the tannery, Jethro standing in front of it, contemplative.  Did he see her?  Would he come to her?  Cynthia, seized by a panic of shame, flew into Aunt Lucy Prescott’s, sat through half an hour of torture while Aunt Lucy talked of redemption of sinners, during ten minutes of which Jethro stood, still contemplative.  What tumult was in his breast, or whether there was any tumult, Cynthia knew not.  He went into the tannery again, and though she saw him twice later in the week, he gave no sign of seeing her.

On Saturday Cynthia bought a new bonnet in Brampton; Sunday morning put it on, suddenly remembered that one went to church to honor God, and wore her old one; walked to meeting in a flutter of expectancy not to be denied, and would have looked around had that not been a cardinal sin in Coniston.  No Jethro!  General opinion (had she waited to hear it among the horse sheds or on the green), that Jethro’s soul had slid back into the murky regions, from which it were folly for even Cynthia to try to drag it.

CHAPTER III

To prove that Jethro’s soul had not slid back into the murky regions, and that it was still indulging in flights, it is necessary to follow him (for a very short space) to Boston.  Jethro himself went in Lyman Hull’s six-horse team with a load of his own merchandise—­hides that he had tanned, and other country produce.  And they did not go by the way of Truro Pass to the Capital, but took the state turnpike over the ranges, where you can see for miles and miles and miles on a clear summer day across the trembling floors of the forest tops to lonely sentinel mountains fourscore miles away.

No one takes the state turnpike nowadays except crazy tourists who are willing to risk their necks and their horses’ legs for the sake of scenery.  The tough little Morgans of that time, which kept their feet like cats, have all but disappeared, but there were places on that road where Lyman Hull put the shoes under his wheels for four miles at a stretch.  He was not a companion many people would have chosen with whom to enjoy the beauties of such a trip, and nearly everybody in Coniston was afraid of him.  Jethro Bass would sit silent on the seat for hours and—­it is a fact to be noted that when he told Lyman to do a thing, Lyman did it; not, perhaps, without cursing and grumbling.  Lyman was a profane and wicked man—­drover, farmer, trader, anything.  He had a cider mill on his farm on the south slopes of Coniston which Mr. Ware had mentioned in his sermons, and which was the resort of the ungodly.  The cider was not so good as Squire Northcutt’s, but cheaper.  Jethro was not afraid of Lyman, and he had a mortgage on the six-horse team, and on the farm and the cider mill.