Wetherell felt like saying that his reading had not been able to do that lately.  Then he made the plunge, and shuddered as he made it.

“Mr. Bass—­I—­I have been waiting to speak to you about that mortgage.”

“Er—­yes,” he answered, without moving his head, “er—­about the mortgage.”

“Mr. Worthington told me that you had bought it.”

“Yes, I did—­yes, I did.”

“I’m afraid you will have to foreclose,” said Wetherell; “I cannot reasonably ask you to defer the payments any longer.”

“If I foreclose it, what will you do?” he demanded abruptly.

There was but one answer—­Wetherell would have to go back to the city and face the consequences.  He had not the strength to earn his bread on a farm.

“If I’d a b’en in any hurry for the money—­g-guess I’d a notified you,” said Jethro.

“I think you had better foreclose, Mr. Bass,” Wetherell answered; “I can’t hold out any hopes to you that it will ever be possible for me to pay it off.  It’s only fair to tell you that.”

“Well,” he said, with what seemed a suspicion of a smile, “I don’t know but what that’s about as honest an answer as I ever got.”

“Why did you do it?” Wetherell cried, suddenly goaded by another fear; “why did you buy that mortgage?”

But this did not shake his composure.

“H-have a little habit of collectin’ ’em,” he answered, “same as you do books.  G-guess some of ’em hain’t as valuable.”

William Wetherell was beginning to think that Jethro knew something also of such refinements of cruelty as were practised by Caligula.  He drew forth his cowhide wallet and produced from it a folded piece of newspaper which must, Wetherell felt sure, contain the mortgage in question.

“There’s one power I always wished I had,” he observed, “the power to make folks see some things as I see ’em.  I was acrost the Water to-night, on my hill farm, when the sun set, and the sky up thar above the mountain was all golden bars, and the river all a-flamin’ purple, just as if it had been dyed by some of them Greek gods you’re readin’ about.  Now if I could put them things on paper, I wouldn’t care a haycock to be President.  No, sir.”

The storekeeper’s amazement as he listened to this speech may be imagined.  Was this Jethro Bass?  If so, here was a side of him the existence of which no one suspected.  Wetherell forgot the matter in hand.

“Why don’t you put that on paper?” he exclaimed.

Jethro smiled, and made a deprecating motion with his thumb.

“Sometimes when I hain’t busy, I drop into the state library at the capital and enjoy myself.  It’s like goin’ to another world without any folks to bother you.  Er—­er—­there’s books I’d like to talk to you about—­sometime.”

“But I thought you told me you didn’t read much, Mr. Bass?”

He made no direct reply, but unfolded the newspaper in his hand, and then Wetherell saw that it was only a clipping.