Cynthia could not deny that these were laudable ambitions.

“Something tells me,” he continued, “that I shall succeed.  And that is why I walk on Coniston Water—­to choose the best site for a dam.”

“I am honored by your secret, but I feel that the responsibility you repose in me is too great,” she said.

“I can think of none in whom I would rather confide,” said he.

“And am I the only one in all Brampton, Harwich, and Coniston who knows this?” she asked.

Mr. Worthington laughed.

“The only one of importance,” he answered.  “This week, when I went to Coniston, I had a strange experience.  I left the brook at a tannery, and a most singular fellow was in the shed shovelling bark.  I tried to get him to talk, and told him about some new tanning machinery I had seen.  Suddenly he turned on me and asked me if I was ‘callatin’ to set up a mill.’  He gave me a queer feeling.  Do you have many such odd characters in Coniston, Miss Cynthia?  You’re not going?”

Cynthia had risen, and all of the laugher was gone from her eyes.  What had happened to make her grow suddenly grave, Isaac Worthington never knew.

“I have to get my father’s supper,” she said.

He, too, rose, puzzled and disconcerted at this change in her.

“And may I not come to Coniston?” he asked.

“My father and I should be glad to see you, Mr. Worthington,” she answered.

He untied her horse and essayed one more topic.

“You are taking a very big book,” he said.  “May I look at the title?”

She showed it to him in silence.  It was the “Life of Napoleon Bonaparte.”

CHAPTER V

Isaac Worthington came to Coniston not once, but many times, before the snow fell; and afterward, too, in Silas Wheelock’s yellow sleigh through the great drifts under the pines, the chestnut Morgan trotting to one side in the tracks.  On one of these excursions he fell in with that singular character of a bumpkin who had interested him on his first visit, in coonskin cap and overcoat and mittens.  Jethro Bass was plodding in the same direction, and Isaac Worthington, out of the goodness of his heart, invited him into the sleigh.  He was scarcely prepared for the bumpkin’s curt refusal, but put it down to native boorishness, and thought no more about it then.

What troubled Mr. Worthington infinitely more was the progress of his suit; for it had become a snit, though progress is a wrong word to use in connection with it.  So far had he got,—­not a great distance,—­and then came to what he at length discovered was a wall, and apparently impenetrable.  He was not even allowed to look over it.  Cynthia was kind, engaging; even mirthful, at times, save when he approached it; and he became convinced that a certain sorrow lay in the forbidden ground.  The nearest he had come to it was when he mentioned again, by accident, that life of Napoleon.