“M-may be—­c-can’t tell,” repeated Eben to himself, unconsciously imitating Jethro’s stutter.  “Godfrey, I’ll hev to git that ticket straight from Amos.”

Yes, we may have our suspicions.  But how can we get a bill on this evidence?  There are some thirty other individuals in Coniston whose mortgages Jethro holds, from a horse to a house and farm.  It is not likely that they will tell Beacon Hatch, or us; that they are going to town meeting and vote for that fatherless ticket because Jethro Bass wishes them to do so.  And Jethro has never said that he wishes them to.  If so, where are your witnesses?  Have we not come back to our starting-point, even as Moses Hatch drove around in a circle..  And we have the advantage over Moses, for we suspect somebody, and he did not know whom to suspect.  Certainly not Jethro Bass, the man that lived under his nose and never said anything—­and had no right to.  Jethro Bass had never taken any active part in politics, though some folks had heard, in his rounds on business, that he had discussed them, and had spread the news of the infamous ticket without a parent.  So much was spoken of at the meeting over which Priest Ware prayed.  It was even declared that, being a Democrat, Jethro might have influenced some of those under obligations to him.  Sam Price was at last fixed upon as the malefactor, though people agreed that they had not given him credit for so much sense, and Jacksonian principles became as much abhorred by the orthodox as the spotted fever.

We can call a host of other witnesses if we like, among them cranky, happy-go-lucky Fletcher Bartlett, who has led forlorn hopes in former years.  Court proceedings make tiresome reading, and if those who have been over ours have not arrived at some notion of the simple and innocent method of the new Era of politics note dawning—­they never will.  Nothing proved.  But here is part of the ticket which nobody started:—­

     For

     Senior selectman, Fletcher Bartlett.

     (Farm and buildings on Thousand Acre Hill mortgaged to Jethro
     Bass.)

     Second selectman, Amos Cuthbert.

     (Farm and buildings on Town’s End Ridge mortgaged to Jethro
     Bass.)

     Third selectman, Chester Perkins.

     (Sop of some kind to the Established Church party.  Horse and
     cow mortgaged to Jethro Bass, though his father, the tithing-man,
doesn’t know it.)

     Moderator, Samuel price.

     (Natural ambition—­dove of oratory and Jacksonian principles.)

     etc., etc.

The notes are mine, not Moses’s.  Strange that they didn’t occur to Moses.  What a wealthy man has our hero become at thirty-one!  Jethro Bass was rich beyond the dreams of avarice—­for Coniston.  Truth compels me to admit that the sum total of all his mortgages did not amount to nine thousand “dollars”; but that was a large sum of money for Coniston in those days, and even now.  Nathan Bass had been a saving man, and had left to his son one-half of this fortune.  If thrift and the ability to gain wealth be qualities for a hero, Jethro had them—­in those days.