“But I must live, Doctor,” said William Wetherell.

The doctor looked at Cynthia.

“You will not live if you stay here,” he replied.

“Then he will go,” said Cynthia, so quietly that he gave her another look, strange and tender and comprehending.  He, sat and talked of many things:  of the great war that was agonizing the nation; of the strong man who, harassed and suffering himself, was striving to guide it, likening Lincoln unto a physician.  So the doctor was wont to take the minds of patients from themselves.  And before he left he gave poor Wetherell a fortnight to decide.

As he lay on his back in that room among the chimney tops trying vainly to solve the problem of how he was to earn his salt in the country, a visitor was climbing the last steep flight of stairs.  That visitor was none other than Sergeant Ephraim Prescott, son of Isaiah of the pitch-pipe, and own cousin of Cynthia Ware’s.  Sergeant Ephraim was just home from the war and still clad in blue, and he walked with a slight limp by reason of a bullet he had got in the Wilderness, and he had such an honest, genial face that little Cynthia was on his knee in a moment.

“How be you, Will?  Kind of poorly, I callate.  So Cynthy’s b’en took,” he said sadly.  “Always thought a sight of Cynthy.  Little Cynthy favors her some.  Yes, thought I’d drop in and see how you be on my way home.”

Sergeant Ephraim had much to say about the great war, and about Coniston.  True to the instincts of the blood of the Stark hero, he had left the plough and the furrow’ at the first call, forty years of age though he was.  But it had been otherwise with many in Coniston and Brampton and Harwich.  Some of these, when the drafting came, had fled in bands to the mountain and defied capture.  Mr. Dudley Worthington, now a mill owner, had found a substitute; Heth Sutton of Clovelly had been drafted and had driven over the mountain to implore Jethro Bass abjectly to get him out of it.  In short, many funny things had happened—­funny things to Sergeant Ephraim, but not at all to William Wetherell, who sympathized with Heth in his panic.

“So Jethro Bass has become a great man,” said Wetherell.

“Great!” Ephraim ejaculated.  “Guess he’s the biggest man in the state to-day.  Queer how he got his power began twenty-four years ago when I wahn’t but twenty.  I call that town meetin’ to mind as if ’twas yesterday never was such an upset.  Jethro’s be’n first Selectman ever sense, though he turned Republican in ’60.  Old folks don’t fancy Jethro’s kind of politics much, but times change.  Jethro saved my life, I guess.”

“Saved your life!” exclaimed Wetherell.

“Got me a furlough,” said Ephraim.  “Guess I would have died in the hospital if he hadn’t got it so all-fired quick, and he druv down to Brampton to fetch me back.  You’d have thought I was General Grant the way folks treated me.”

“You went back to the war after your leg healed?” Wetherell asked, in wondering admiration of the man’s courage.