At last, by mighty efforts of the peace loving in both parties, something like order is restored, the ballots are in the box, and Deacon Lysander is counting them:  not like another moderator I have heard of, who spilled the votes on the floor until his own man was elected.  No.  Had they registered his own death sentence, the deacon would have counted them straight, and needed no town clerk to verify his figures.  But when he came to pronounce the vote, shame and sorrow and mortification overcame him.  Coniston, his native town, which he had served and revered, was dishonored, and it was for him, Lysander Richardson, to proclaim her disgrace.  The deacon choked, and tears of bitterness stood in his eyes, and there came a silence only broken by the surging of the sleet as he rapped on the table.

“Seventy-five votes have been cast for Jethro Bass—­sixty-three for Moses Hatch.  Necessary for a choice, seventy—­and Jethro Bass is elected senior Selectman.”

The deacon sat down, and men say that a great sob shook him, while Jacksonian Democracy went wild—­not looking into future years to see what they were going wild about.  Jethro Bass Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, in the honored place of Deacon Moses Hatch!  Bourbon royalists never looked with greater abhorrence on the Corsican adventurer and usurper of the throne than did the orthodox in Coniston on this tanner, who had earned no right to aspire to any distinction, and who by his wiles had acquired the highest office in the town government.  Fletcher Bartlett in, as a leader of the irresponsible opposition, would have been calamity enough.  But Jethro Bass!

This man whom they had despised was the master mind who had organized and marshalled the loose vote, was the author of that ticket, who sat in his corner unmoved alike by the congratulations of his friends and the maledictions of his enemies; who rose to take his oath of office as unconcerned as though the house were empty, albeit Deacon Lysander could scarcely get the words out.  And then Jethro sat down again in his chair—­not to leave it for six and thirty years.  From this time forth that chair became a seat of power, and of dominion over a state.

Thus it was that Jock Hallowell’s prophecy, so lightly uttered, came to pass.

How the remainder of that Jacksonian ticket was elected, down to the very hog-reeves, and amid what turmoil of the Democracy and bitterness of spirit of the orthodox, I need not recount.  There is no moral to the story, alas—­it was one of those things which inscrutable heaven permitted to be done.  After that dark town-meeting day some of those stern old fathers became broken men, and it is said in Coniston that this calamity to righteous government, and not the storm, gave to Priest Ware his death-stroke.

CHAPTER VI