“They’ll be surprised some, and disappointed some,” said Lem, cheerily; “they was kind of plannin’ a little celebration when you come back, Will—­you and Cynthy.  Amandy Hatch was a-goin’ to bake a cake, and the minister was callatin’ to say some word of welcome.  Wahn’t goin’ to be anything grand—­jest homelike.  But you was right to come if you was tuckered.  I guess Cynthy fetched you.  Rias he kep’ store and done it well,—­brisker’n I ever see him, Rias was.  Wait till I put some of them things back, and make you more comfortable, Will.”

He moved a few parcels and packages from Wetherell’s feet and glanced at Cynthia as he did so.  The mountain cast its vast blue shadow over forest and pasture, and above the pines the white mist was rising from Coniston Water—­rising in strange shapes.  Lem’s voice seemed to William Wetherell to have given way to a world-wide silence, in the midst of which he sought vainly for Cynthia and the stage driver.  Most extraordinary of all, out of the silence and the void came the checker-paned windows of the store at Coniston, then the store itself, with the great oaks bending over it, then the dear familiar faces,—­Moses and Amandy, Eph Prescott limping toward them, and little Rias Richardson in an apron with a scoop shovel in his hand, and many others.  They were not smiling at the storekeeper’s return—­they looked very grave.  Then somebody lifted him tenderly from the stage and said:—­

“Don’t you worry a mite, Cynthy.  Jest tuckered, that’s all.”

William Wetherell was “just tuckered.”  The great Dr. Coles, authority on pulmonary troubles, who came all the way from Boston, could give no better verdict than that.  It was Jethro Bass who had induced Dr. Coles to come to Coniston—­much against the great man’s inclination, and to the detriment of his patients:  Jethro who, on receiving Cynthia’s note, had left the capital on the next train and had come to Coniston, and had at once gone to Boston for the specialist.

“I do not know why I came,” said the famous physician to Dr. Abraham Rowell of Tarleton, “I never shall know.  There is something about that man Jethro Bass which compels you to do his will.  He has a most extraordinary personality.  Is this storekeeper a great friend of his?”

“The only intimate friend he had in the world,” answered Dr. Rowell; “none of us could ever understand it.  And as for the girl, Jethro Bass worships her.”

“If nursing could cure him, I’d trust her to do it.  She’s a natural-born nurse.”

The two physicians were talking in low tones in the little garden behind the store when Jethro came out of the doorway.

“He looks as if he were suffering too,” said the Boston physician, and he walked toward Jethro and laid a hand upon his shoulders.  “I give him until winter, my friend,” said Dr. Coles.

Jethro Bass sat down on the doorstep—­on that same millstone where he had talked with Cynthia many years before—­and was silent for a long while.  The doctor was used to scenes of sorrow, but the sight of this man’s suffering unnerved him, and he turned from it.