It was perhaps as well that Cynthia was not a woman at this time, and that she had grown up with him, as it were.  His love, indeed, was that of a father for a daughter; but it held within it as a core the revived love of his youth for Cynthia, her mother.  Tender as were the manifestations of this love, Cynthia never guessed the fires within, for there was in truth something primeval in the fierceness of his passion.  She was his now—­his alone, to cherish and sweeten the declining years of his life, and when by a chance Jethro looked upon her and thought of the suitor who was to come in the fulness of her years, he burned with a hatred which it is given few men to feel.  It was well for Jethro that these thoughts came not often.

Sometimes, in the summer afternoons, they took long drives through the town behind Jethro’s white horse on business.  “Jethro’s gal,” as Cynthia came to be affectionately called, held the reins while Jethro went in to talk to the men folk.  One August evening found Cynthia thus beside a poplar in front of Amos Cuthbert’s farmhouse, a poplar that shimmered green-gold in the late afternoon, and from the buggy-seat Cynthia looked down upon a thousand purple hilltops and mountain peaks of another state.  The view aroused in the girl visions of the many wonders which life was to hold, and she did not hear the sharp voice beside her until the woman had spoken twice.  Jethro came out in the middle of the conversation, nodded to Mrs. Cuthbert, and drove off.

“Uncle Jethro,” asked Cynthia, presently, “what is a mortgage?”

Jethro struck the horse with the whip, an uncommon action with him, and the buggy was jerked forward sharply over the boulders.

“Er—­who’s b’en talkin’ about mortgages, Cynthy?” he demanded.

“Mrs. Cuthbert said that when folks had mortgage held over them they had to take orders whether they liked them or not.  She said that Amos had to do what you told him because there was a mortgage.  That isn’t so is it?”

Jethro did not speak.  Presently Cynthia laid her hand over his.

“Mrs. Cuthbert is a spiteful woman,” she said.  “I know the reason why people obey you—­it’s because you’re so great.  And Daddy used to tell me so.”

A tremor shook Jethro’s frame and the hand on which hers rested, and all the way down the mountain valleys to Coniston village he did not speak again.  But Cynthia was used to his silences, and respected them.

To Ephraim Prescott, who, as the days went on, found it more and more difficult to sew harness on account of his rheumatism, Jethro was not only a great man but a hero.  For Cynthia was vaguely troubled at having found one discontent.  She was wont to entertain Ephraim on the days when his hands failed him, when he sat sunning himself before his door; and she knew that he was honest.

“Who’s b’en talkin’ to you, Cynthia?” he cried.  “Why, Jethro’s the biggest man I know, and the best.  I don’t like to think where some of us would have b’en if he hadn’t given us a lift.”