“Flint,” he said at last, striving his best for an indifferent accent, “Jethro Bass is here—­I ran across him just now drawing money in the bank.”

“I could have told you that this morning,” answered Mr. Flint.  “Wheeler, who runs errands for him in Coniston, drove him in this morning, and he’s been with Peleg Hartington for two hours over Sherman’s livery stable.”

An interval of silence followed, during which Mr. Worthington shuffled with his letters and pretended to read them.

“Graves has called a mass meeting to-night, I understand,” he remarked in the same casual way.  “The man’s a demagogue, and mad as a loon.  I believe he sent back one of our passes once, didn’t he?  I suppose Bass has come in to get Hartington to work up the meeting.  They’ll be laughed out of the town hall, or hissed out.”

“I guess you’ll find Bass has come down for something else,” said Mr. Flint, looking up from a division report.

“What do you mean?” demanded Mr. Worthington, changing his attitude to one of fierceness.  But he was well aware that whatever tone he took with his seneschal, he never fooled him.

“I mean what I told you yesterday,” said Flint, “that you’ve stirred up the dragon.”

Even Mr. Flint did not know how like a knell his words sounded in Isaac Worthington’s ears.

“Nonsense!” he cried, “you’re talking nonsense, Flint.  We maimed him too thoroughly for that.  He hasn’t power enough left to carry his own town.”

“All right,” said the seneschal.

“What do you mean by that?” said his master, with extreme irritation.

“I mean what I said yesterday, that we haven’t maimed him at all.  He had his own reasons for going into his hole, and he never would have come out again if you hadn’t goaded him.  Now he’s out, and we’ll have to step around pretty lively, I can tell you, or he’ll maim us.”

All of which goes to show that Mr. Flint had some notion of men and affairs.  He became, as may be predicted, the head of many material things in later days, and he may sometime reappear in company with other characters in this story.

The sickly feeling in Mr. Worthington’s diaphragm had now returned.

“I think you will find you are mistaken, Flint,” he said, attempting dignity now.  “Very much mistaken.”

“Very well,” said Flint, “perhaps I am.  But I believe you’ll find he left for the capital on the eleven o’clock, and if you take the trouble to inquire from Bedding you will probably learn that the Throne Room is bespoken for the session.”

All of that which Mr, Flint had predicted turned out to be true.  The dragon had indeed waked up.  It all began with the news Milly Skinner had got from the stage driver, imparted to Jethro as he sat reading about Hiawatha.  And terrible indeed had been that awakening.  This dragon did not bellow and roar and lash his tail when he was roused, but he stood up, and there seemed to emanate from him a fire which frightened poor Milly Skinner, upset though she was by the news of Cynthia’s dismissal.  O, wondrous and paradoxical might of love, which can tame the most powerful of beasts, and stir them again into furies by a touch!