“Jock Hallowell!” cried Cynthia, the gray beginning to dance, “I suppose you think Jethro’s going to be President.”

“All right,” said Jock, “you can laugh.  Ever talked with Jethro?”

“I’ve hardly spoken two words to him in my life,” she replied.  And it was true, although the little white parsonage was scarce two hundred yards from the tannery house.

“Jethro’s never ailed much,” Jock remarked, having reference to Cynthia’s proclivities for visiting the sick.  “I’ve seed a good many different men in my time, and I tell you, Cynthia Ware, that Jethro’s got a kind of power you don’t often come acrost.  Folks don’t suspicion it.”

In spite of herself, Cynthia was impressed by the ring of sincerity in the builder’s voice.  Now that she thought of it, there was rugged power in Jethro’s face, especially when he took off the coonskin cap.  She always nodded a greeting when she saw him in the tannery yard or on the road, and sometimes he nodded back, but oftener he had not appeared to see her.  She had thought this failure to nod stupidity, but it might after all be abstraction.

“What makes you think he has ability?” she asked, picking flowers from a bunch of arbutus she held.

“He’s rich, for one thing,” said Jock.  He had not intended a dissertation on Jethro Bass, but he felt bound to defend his statements.

“Rich!”

“Wal, he hain’t poor.  He’s got as many as thirty mortgages round among the farmers—­some on land, and some on cattle.”

“How did he make the money?” demanded Cynthia, in surprise.

“Hides an’ wool an’ bark—­turned ’em over an’ swep’ in.  Gits a load, and Lyman Hull drives him down to Boston with that six-hoss team.  Lyman gits drunk, Jethro keeps sober and saves.”

Jock began to fashion some wooden pegs with his adze, for nails were scarce in those days.  Still Cynthia lingered, picking flowers from the bunch.

“What did you mean by ‘fox and geese’ Jock?” she said presently.

Jock laughed.  He did not belong to the Establishment, but was a Universalist; politically he admired General Jackson.  “What’d you say if Jethro was Chairman of the next Board of Selectmen?” he demanded.

No wonder Cynthia gasped.  Jethro Bass, Chairman of the Board, in the honored seat of Deacon Moses Hatch, the perquisite of the church in Coniston!  The idea was heresy.  As a matter of fact, Jock himself uttered it as a playful exaggeration.  Certain nonconformist farmers, of whom there were not a few in the town, had come into Jonah Winch’s store that morning; and Jabez Miller, who lived on the north slope, had taken away the breath of the orthodox by suggesting that Jethro Bass be nominated for town office.  Jock Hallowell had paused once or twice on his work on the steeple to look across the tree-tops at Coniston shouldering the sky.  He had been putting two and two together, and now he was merely making five out of it, instead of four.  He remembered that Jethro Bass had for some years been journeying through the town, baying his hides and wool, and collecting the interest on his mortgages.