The next thing he wished to do was to go to Coniston and rouse Jethro.  Cynthia’s heart stood still when he proposed this, for it touched upon her greatest fear,—­which had impelled her to go to Coniston.  But she had hoped and believed that Jethro, knowing her feelings, would do nothing—­since for her sake he had chosen to give up his power.  Now an acute attack of rheumatism had come to her rescue, and she succeeded in getting Ephraim off to bed, swathed in bandages.

The next morning he had insisted upon hobbling away to the postoffice, where in due time he was discovered by certain members of the Brampton Club nailing to the wall a new engraving of Abraham Lincoln, and draping it with a little silk flag he had bought in Boston.  By which it will be seen that a potion of the Club were coming back to their old haunt.  This portion, it may be surmised, was composed of such persons alone as were likely to be welcomed by the postmaster.  Some of these had grievances against Mr. Worthington or Mr. Flint; others, in more prosperous circumstances, might have been moved by envy of these gentlemen; still others might have been actuated largely by righteous resentment at what they deemed oppression by wealth and power.  These members who came that morning comprised about one-fourth of those who formerly had been in the habit of dropping in for a chat, and their numbers were a fair indication of the fact that those who from various motives took the part of the schoolteacher in Brampton were as one to three.

It is not necessary to repeat their expressions of indignation and sympathy.  There was a certain Mr. Gamaliel Ives in the town, belonging to an old Brampton family, who would have been the first citizen if that other first citizen had not, by his rise to wealth and power, so completely overshadowed him.  Mr. Ives owned a small mill on Coniston Water below the town.  He fairly bubbled over with civic pride, and he was an authority on all matters pertaining to Brampton’s history.  He knew the “Hymn to Coniston” by heart.  But we are digressing a little.  Mr. Ives, like that other Gamaliel of old, had exhorted his fellow-townsmen to wash their hands of the controversy.  But he was an intimate of Judge Graves, and after talking with that gentleman he became a partisan overnight; and when he had stopped to get his mail he had been lured behind the window by the debate in progress.  He was in the midst of some impromptu remarks when he recognized a certain brisk step behind him, and Isaac D. Worthington himself entered the sanctum!

It must be explained that Mr. Worthington sometimes had an important letter to be registered which he carried to the postoffice with his own hands.  On such occasions—­though not a member of the Brampton Club—­he walked, as an overlord will, into any private place he chose, and recognized no partitions or barriers.  Now he handed the letter (addressed to a certain person in Cambridge, Massachusetts) to the postmaster.