“What’s your price?  Name it, for God’s sake.”

“B-better wait till you get the bill—­hadn’t you? b-better wait till you get the bill.”

“Will you put the franchise through?”

“Goin’ down to the capital soon?” Jethro inquired.

“I’m going down on Thursday.”

“B-better come in and see me,” said Jethro.

“Very well,” answered Mr. Worthington; “I’ll be in at two o’clock on Thursday.”  And then, without another word to either of them, he swung on his heel and strode quickly out of the store.  Jethro did not move.

William Wetherell’s hand was trembling so that he could not write, and he could not trust his voice to speak.  Although Jethro had never mentioned Isaac Worthington’s name to him, Wetherell knew that Jethro hated the first citizen of Brampton.

At length, when the sound of the wheels had died away, Jethro broke the silence.

“Er—­didn’t laugh—­did he, Will?  Didn’t laugh once—­did he?”

“Laugh!” echoed the storekeeper, who himself had never been further from laughter in his life.

“M-might have let him off easier if he’d laughed,” said Jethro, “if he’d laughed just once, m-might have let him off easier.”

And with this remark he went out of the store and left Wetherell alone.

CHAPTER XIII

The weekly letter to the Newcastle Guardian was not finished that night, but Coniston slept, peacefully, unaware of Mr. Worthington’s visit; and never, indeed, discovered it, since the historian for various reasons of his own did not see fit to insert the event in his plan of the Town History.  Before another sun had set Jethro Bass had departed for the state capital, not choosing to remain to superintend the haying of the many farms which had fallen into his hand,—­a most unusual omission for him.

Presently rumors of a mighty issue about the Truro Railroad began to be discussed by the politicians at the Coniston store, and Jake Wheeler held himself in instant readiness to answer a summons to the capital—­which never came.

Delegations from Brampton and Harwich went to petition the Legislature for the franchise, and the Brampton Clarion and Harwich Sentinel declared that the people of Truro County recognized in Isaac Worthington a great and public-spirited man, who ought by all means to be the next governor—­if the franchise went through.

One evening Lem Hallowell, after depositing a box of trimmings at Ephraim Prescott’s harness shop, drove up to the platform of the store with the remark that “things were gittin’ pretty hot down to the capital in that franchise fight.”

“Hain’t you b’en sent for yet, Jake?” he cried, throwing his reins over the backs of his sweating Morgans; “well, that’s strange.  Guess the fight hain’t as hot as we hear about.  Jethro hain’t had to call out his best men.”

“I’m a-goin’ down if there’s trouble,” declared Jake, who consistently ignored banter.