“G-guess I’m willin’ to pay you full as much as it’s worth,” said Jethro, producing a cowhide wallet.  “Er—­what figure do you allow it comes to with the frame?”

The artist was past taking offence, since Jethro had long ago become for him an engrossing study.

“I will send you the bill for the frame, Mr. Bass,” he said, “the picture belongs to Cynthia.”

“Earn your livin’ by paintin’, don’t you—­earn your livin’?”

The painter smiled a little bitterly.

“No,” he said, “if I did, I shouldn’t be—­alive.  Mr. Bass, have you ever done anything the pleasure of doing which was pay enough, and to spare?”

Jethro looked at him, and something very like admiration came into the face that was normally expressionless.

He put up his wallet a little awkwardly, and held out his hand more awkwardly.

“You be more of a feller than I thought for,” he said, and strode off through the drizzle toward Coniston.  The painter walked slowly to the kitchen, where Chester Perkins and his wife were sitting down to supper.

“Jethro got a mortgage on you, too?” asked Chester.

The artist had his reward, for when the picture was hung at length in the little parlor of the tannery house it became a source of pride to Coniston second only to Jethro himself.

CHAPTER II

Time passes, and the engines of the Truro Railroad are now puffing in and out of the yards of Worthington’s mills in Brampton, and a fine layer of dust covers the old green stage which has worn the road for so many years over Truro Gap.  If you are ever in Brampton, you can still see the stage, if you care to go into the back of what was once Jim Sanborn’s livery stable, now owned by Mr. Sherman of the Brampton House.

Conventions and elections had come and gone, and the Honorable Heth Sutton had departed triumphantly to Washington, cheered by his neighbors in Clovelly.  Chamberlain Bixby was left in charge there, supreme.  Who could be more desirable as a member of Congress than Mr. Sutton, who had so ably served his party (and Jethro) by holding the House against the insurgents in the matter of the Truro Bill?  Mr. Sutton was, moreover, a gentleman, an owner of cattle and land, a man of substance whom lesser men were proud to mention as a friend—­a very hill-Rajah with stock in railroads and other enterprises, who owed allegiance and paid tribute alone to the Great Man of Coniston.

Mr. Sutton was one who would make himself felt even in the capital of the United States—­felt and heard.  And he had not been long in the Halls of Congress before he made a speech which rang under the very dome of the Capitol.  So said the Brampton and Harwich papers, at least, though rivals and detractors of Mr. Sutton declared that they could find no matter in it which related to the subject of a bill, but that is neither here nor there.  The oration began with a lengthy tribute to the resources and history of his state, and ended by a declaration that the speaker was in Congress at no man’s bidding, but as the servant of the common people of his district.