When the lion is crippled, the jackals begin to range.  A jackal reconnoitered the lair to see how badly the lion was crippled, and conceived with astounding insolence the plan of capturing the lion’s quarry.  This jackal, who was an old one, well knew how to round up a quarry, and fled back over the hills to consult with a bigger jackal, his master.  As a result, two days before March town-meeting day, Mr. Bijah Bixby paid a visit to the Harwich bank and went among certain Coniston farmers looking over the sheep, his clothes bulging out in places when he began, and seemingly normal enough when he had finished.  History repeats itself, even among lions and jackals.  Thirty-six years before there had been a town-meeting in Coniston and a surprise.  Established Church, decent and orderly selectmen and proceedings had been toppled over that day, every outlying farm sending its representative through the sleet to do it.  And now retribution was at hand.  This March-meeting day was mild, the grass showing a green color on the south slopes where the snow had melted, and the outlying farmers drove through mud-holes up to the axles.  Drove, albeit, in procession along the roads, grimly enough, and the sheds Jock Hallowell had built around the meeting-house could not hold the horses; they lined the fences and usurped the hitching posts of the village street, and still they came.  Their owners trooped with muddy boots into the meeting-house, and when the moderator rapped for order the Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, Jethro Bass, was not in his place; never, indeed, would be there again.  Six and thirty years he had been supreme in that town—­long enough for any man.  The beams and king posts would know him no more.  Mr. Amos Cuthbert was elected Chairman, not without a gallant and desperate but unsupported fight of a minority led by Mr. Jake Wheeler, whose loyalty must be taken as a tribute to his species.  Farmer Cuthbert was elected, and his mortgage was not foreclosed!  Had it been, there was more money in the Harwich bank.

There was no telegraph to Coniston in these days, and so Mr. Sam Price, with his horse in a lather, might have been seen driving with unseemly haste toward Brampton, where in due time he arrived.  Half an hour later there was excitement at Newcastle, sixty-five miles away, in the office of the Guardian, and the next morning the excitement had spread over the whole state.

Jethro Bass was dethroned in Coniston—­discredited in his own town!

And where was Jethro?  Did his heart ache, did he bow his head as he thought of that supremacy, so hardly won, so superbly held, gone forever?  Many were the curious eyes on the tannery house that day, and for days after, but its owner gave no signs of concern.  He read and thought and chopped wood in the tannery shed as usual.  Never, I believe, did man, shorn of power, accept his lot more quietly.  His struggle was over, his battle was fought, a greater peace than he had ever thought to hope for was won.