“See here, Chester Perkins,” Lem Hallowell interposed, as he drove up with the stage, “what kind of free principles be you preachin’?  You’d ought to know better’n coerce.”

“What be you a-goin’ to do about that Four Corners road?” Chester cried to the stage driver.

“I give ’em till to-morrow night to fix it,” said Lem.  “Git in, Will.  Cynthy’s over to the harness shop with Eph.  We’ll stop as we go ’long.”

“Give ’em till to-morrow night!” Chester shouted after them.  “What you goin’ to do then?”

But Lem did not answer this inquiry.  He stopped at the harness shop, where Ephraim came limping out and lifted Cynthia to the seat beside her father, and they joggled off to Brampton.  The dew still lay in myriad drops on the red herd’s-grass, turning it to lavender in the morning sun, and the heavy scent of the wet ferns hung in the forest.  Lem whistled, and joked with little Cynthia, and gave her the reins to drive, and of last they came in sight of Brampton Street, with its terrace-steepled church and line of wagons hitched to the common rail, for it was market day.  Father and daughter walked up and down, hand in hand, under the great trees, and then they went to the bank.

It was a brick building on a corner opposite the common, imposing for Brampton, and very imposing to Wetherell.  It seemed like a tomb as he entered its door, Cynthia clutching his fingers, and never but once in his life had he been so near to leaving all hope behind.  He waited patiently by the barred windows until the clerk, who was counting bills, chose to look up at him.

“Want to draw money?” he demanded.

The words seemed charged with irony.  William Wetherell told him, falteringly, his name and business, and he thought the man looked at him compassionately.

“You’ll have to see Mr. Worthington,” he said; “he hasn’t gone to the mills yet.”

“Dudley Worthington?” exclaimed Wetherell.

The teller smiled.

“Yes.  He’s the president of this bank."’

He opened a door in the partition, and leaving Cynthia dangling her feet from a chair, Wetherell was ushered, not without trepidation, into the great man’s office, and found himself at last in the presence of Mr. Isaac D. Worthington, who used to wander up and down Coniston Water searching for a mill site.

He sat behind a table covered with green leather, on which papers were laid with elaborate neatness, and he wore a double-breasted skirted coat of black, with braided lapels, a dark purple blanket cravat with a large red cameo pin.  And Mr. Worthington’s features harmonized perfectly with this costume—­those of a successful, ambitious man who followed custom and convention blindly; clean-shaven, save for reddish chops, blue eyes of extreme keenness, and thin-upped mouth which had been tightening year by year as the output of the Worthington Minx increased.

“Well, sir,” he said sharply, “what can I do for you?”