“Sometimes—­sometimes I think if he hadn’t gone to the capital, Cynthy, this mightn’t hev come,” he said to her once.

“But the doctor said that didn’t matter, Uncle Jethro,” she answered, trying to comfort him.  She, too, believed that something had happened at the capital.

“N-never spoke to you about anything there—­n-never spoke to you, Cynthia?”

“No, never,” she said.  “He—­he hardly speaks at all, Uncle Jethro.”

One bright morning after the sun had driven away the frost, when the sumacs and maples beside Coniston Water were aflame with red, Bias Richardson came stealing up the stairs and whispered something to Cynthia.

“Dad,” she said, laying down her book, “it’s Mr. Merrill.  Will you see him?”

William Wetherell gave her a great fright.  He started up from his pillows, and seized her wrist with a strength which she had not thought remained in his fingers.

“Mr. Merrill!” he cried—­“Mr. Merrill here!”

“Yes,” answered Cynthia, agitatedly, “he’s downstairs—­in the store.”

“Ask him to come up,” said Wetherell, sinking back again, “ask him to come up.”

Cynthia, as she stood in the passage, was of two minds about it.  She was thoroughly frightened, and went first to the garden to ask Jethro’s advice.  But Jethro, so Milly Skinner said, had gone off half an hour before, and did not know that Mr. Merrill had arrived.  Cynthia went back again to her father.

“Where’s Mr. Merrill?” asked Wetherell.

“Dad, do you think you ought to see him?  He—­he might excite you.”

“I insist upon seeing him, Cynthia.”

William Wetherell had never said anything like that before.  But Cynthia obeyed him, and presently led Mr. Merrill into the room.  The kindly little railroad president was very serious now.  The wasted face of the storekeeper, enhanced as it was by the beard, gave Mr. Merrill such a shock that he could not speak for a few moments—­he who rarely lacked for cheering words on any occasion.  A lump rose in his throat as he went over and stood by the chair and took the sick man’s hand.

“I am glad you came, Mr. Merrill,” said Wetherell, simply, “I wanted to speak to you.  Cynthia, will you leave us alone for a few minutes?”

Cynthia went, troubled and perplexed, wondering at the change in him.  He had had something on his mind—­now she was sure of it—­something which Mr. Merrill might be able to relieve.

It was Mr. Merrill who spoke first when she was gone.

“I was coming up to Brampton,” he said, “and Tom Collins, who drives the Truro coach, told me you were sick.  I had not heard of it.”

Mr. Merrill, too, had something on his mind, and did not quite know how to go on.  There was in William Wetherell, as he sat in the chair with his eyes fixed on his visitor’s face, a dignity which Mr. Merrill had not seen before—­had not thought the man might possess.