Jethro Bass!  It is he who might be made the theme of the music of the snarling trumpets.  What was he about during those six weeks?  That is what the state at large was beginning to wonder, and the state at large was looking on at a drama, too.  A rumor reached the capital and radiated thence to every city and town and hamlet, and was followed by other rumors like confirmations.  Jethro Bass, for the first time in a long life of activity, was inactive:  inactive, too, at this most critical period of his career, the climax of it, with a war to be waged which for bitterness and ferocity would have no precedent; with the town meetings at hand, where the frontier fighting was to be done, and no quarter given.  Lieutenants had gone to Coniston for further orders and instructions, and had come back without either.  Achilles was sulking in the tannery house—­some said a broken Achilles.  Not a word could be got out of him, or the sign of an intention.  Jake Wheeler moped through the days in Rias Richardson’s store, too sore at heart to speak to any man, and could have wept if tears had been a relief to him.  No more blithe errands over the mountain to Clovelly and elsewhere, though Jake knew the issue now and itched for the battle, and the vassals of the hill-Rajah under a jubilant Bijah Bixby were arming cap-a-pie.  Lieutenant-General-and-Senator Peleg Hartington of Brampton, in his office over the livery stable, shook his head like a mournful stork when questioned by brother officers from afar.  Operations were at a standstill, and the sinews of war relaxed.  Rural givers of mortgages, who had not had the opportunity of selling them or had feared to do so, began (mirabile dictu) to express opinions.  Most ominous sign of all—­the proprietor of the Pelican Hotel had confessed that the Throne Room had not been engaged for the coming session.

Was it possible that Jethro Bass lay crushed under the weight of the accusations which had been printed, and were still being printed, in the Newcastle Guardian?  He did not answer them, or retaliate in other newspapers, but Jethro Bass had never made use of newspapers in this way.  Still, nothing ever printed about him could be compared with those articles.  Had remorse suddenly overtaken him in his old age?  Such were the questions people we’re asking all over the state—­people, at least, who were interested in politics, or in those operations which went by the name of politics:  yes, and many private citizens—­who had participated in politics only to the extent of voting for such candidates as Jethro in his wisdom had seen fit to give them, read the articles and began to say that boss domination was at an end.  A new era was at hand, which they fondly (and very properly) believed was to be a golden era.  It was, indeed, to be a golden era—­until things got working; and then the gold would cease.  The Newcastle Guardian, with unconscious irony, proclaimed the golden era; and declared that its columns, even in other days and under other ownership, had upheld the wisdom of Jethro Bass.  And he was still a wise man, said the Guardian, for he had had sense enough to give up the fight.