and the notion occurred to me to get him to show you his library. I have explained to him that you were innocent. I--I hope you haven't been worrying."
William Wetherell sat very still for a while, gazing out of the window, but a new look had come into his eyes.
"Jethro Bass did not know that you--that you had used me?" he asked at length.
"No," replied Mr. Merrill thickly, "no. He didn't know a thing about it--he doesn't know it now, I believe."
A smile came upon Wetherell's face, but Mr. Merrill could not look at it.
"You have made me very happy," said the storekeeper, tremulously. "I--I have no right to be proud--I have taken his money--he has supported my daughter and myself all these years. But he had never asked me to--to do anything, and I liked to think that he never would."
Mr. Merrill could not speak. The tears were streaming down his cheeks.
"I want you to promise me, Mr. Merril!" he went on presently, "I want you to promise me that you will never speak to Jethro, of this, or to my daughter, Cynthia."
Mr. Merrill merely nodded his head in assent. Still he could not speak.
"They might think it was this that caused my death. It was not. I know very well that I am worn out, and that I should have gone soon in any case. And I must leave Cynthia to him. He loves her as his own child."
William Wetherell, his faith in Jethro restored, was facing death as he had never faced life. Mr. Merrill was greatly affected.
"You must not speak of dying, Wetherell," said he, brokenly. "Will you forgive me?"
"There is nothing to forgive, now that you have explained matters, Mr. Merrill" said the storekeeper, and he smiled again. "If my fibre had been a little tougher, this thing would never have happened. There is only one more request I have to make. And that is, to assure Mr. Duncan, from me, that I did not detain him purposely."
"I will see him on my way to Boston," answered Mr. Merrill.
Then Cynthia was called. She was waiting anxiously in the passage for the interview to be ended, and when she came in one glance at her father's face told her that he was happier. She, too, was happier.
"I wish you would come every day, Mr. Merrill" she said, when they descended into the garden after the three had talked awhile. "It is the first time since he fell ill that he seems himself."
Mr. Merrill's answer was to take her hand and pat it. He sat down on the millstone and drew a deep breath of that sparkling air and sighed, for his memory ran back to his own innocent boyhood in the New England country. He talked to Cynthia until Jethro came.
"I have taken a fancy to this girl, Jethro," said the little railroad president, "I believe I'll steal her; a fellow can't have too many of 'em, you know. I'll tell you one thing,--you won't keep her always shut up here in Coniston. She's much too good to waste on the desert air." Perhaps Mr. Merrill, too, had been thinking of the Elegy that morning. "I don't mean to run down Coniston it's one of the most beautiful places I ever saw. But seriously, Jethro, you and Wetherell ought to send her to school in Boston after a while. She's about the age of my girls, and she can live in my house: Ain't I right?"
"D-don't know but what you be, Steve," Jethro answered slowly.
"I am right," declared Mr. Merrill "you'll back me in this, I know it. Why, she's like your own daughter. You remember what I say. I mean it.--What are you thinking about, Cynthia?"
"I couldn't leave Dad and Uncle Jethro," she said.
"Why, bless your soul," said Mr. Merrill "bring Dad along. We'll find room for him. And I guess Uncle Jethro will get to Boston twice a month if you're there."
And Mr. Merrill got into the buggy with Mr. Sherman and drove away to Brampton, thinking of many things.
"S-Steve's a good man," said Jethro. "C-come up here from Brampton to see your father--did he?"
"Yes," answered Cynthia, "he is very kind." She was about to tell Jethro what a strange difference this visit had made in her father's spirits, but some instinct kept her silent. She knew that Jethro had never ceased to reproach himself for inviting Wetherell to the capital, and she was sure that something had happened there which had disturbed her father and brought on that fearful apathy. But the apathy was dispelled now, and she shrank from giving Jethro pain by mentioning the fact.
He never knew, indeed, until many years afterward, what had brought Stephen Merrill to Coniston. When Jethro went up the stairs that afternoon, he found William Wetherell alone, looking out over the garden with a new peace and contentment in his eyes. Jethro drew breath when he saw that look, as if a great load had been lifted from his heart.
"F-feelin' some better to-day, Will?" he said.
"I am well again, Jethro," replied the storekeeper, pressing Jethro's hand for the first time in months.
"S-soon be, Will," said Jethro, "s-soon be."
Wetherell, who was not speaking of the welfare of the body, did not answer.
"Jethro," he said presently, "there is a little box lying in the top of my trunk over there in the corner. Will you get it for me."
Jethro rose and opened the rawhide trunk and handed the little rosewood box to his friend. Wetherell took it and lifted the lid reverently, with that same smile on his face and far-off look in his eyes, and drew out a small daguerreotype in a faded velvet frame. He gazed at the picture a long time, and then he held it out to Jethro; and Jethro looked at it, and his hand trembled.
It was a picture of Cynthia Ware. And who can say what emotions it awoke in Jethro's heart? She was older than the Cynthia he had known, and yet she did not seem so. There was the same sweet, virginal look in the gray eyes, and the same exquisite purity in the features. He saw her again--as if it were yesterday--walking in the golden green light under the village maples, and himself standing in the tannery door; he saw the face under the poke bonnet on the road to Brampton, and heard the thrush singing in the woods. And--if he could only blot out that scene from his life!--remembered her, a transformed Cynthia,--remembered that face in the lantern-light when he had flung back the hood that shaded it; and that hair which he had kissed, wet, then, from the sleet. Ah, God, for that briefest 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