Coniston was the first to tremble, as though the forces stretching themselves in the tannery house were shaking the very ground, and the name of Jethro Bass took on once more, as by magic, a terrible meaning.  When Vesuvius is silent, pygmies may make faces on the very lip of the crater, and they on the slopes forget the black terror of the fiery hail.  Jake Wheeler himself, loyal as he was, did not care to look into the crater now that he was summoned; but a force pulled him all the way to the tannery house.  He left behind him an awe-stricken gathering at the store, composed of inhabitants who had recently spoken slightingly of the volcano.

We are getting a little mixed in our metaphors between lions and dragons and volcanoes, and yet none of them are too strong to represent Jethro Bass when he heard that Isaac Worthington had had the teacher dismissed from Brampton lower school.  He did not stop to reason then that action might distress her.  The beast in him awoke again; the desire for vengeance on a man whom he had hated most of his life, and who now had dared to cause pain to the woman whom he loved with all his soul, and even idolize, was too great to resist.  He had no thought of resisting it, for the waters of it swept over his soul like the Atlantic over a lost continent.  He would crush Isaac Worthington if it took the last breath from his body.

Jake went to the tannery house and received his orders—­orders of which he made a great mystery afterward at the store, although they consisted simply of directions to be prepared to drive Jethro to Brampton the next morning.  But the look of the man had frightened Jake.  He had never seen vengeance so indelibly written on that face, and he had never before realized the terrible power of vengeance.  Mr. Wheeler returned from that meeting in such a state of trepidation that he found it necessary to accompany Rias to a certain keg in the cellar; after which he found his tongue.  His description of Jethro’s appearance awed his hearers, and Jake declared that he would not be in Isaac Worthington’s shoes for all of Isaac Worthington’s money.  There were others right here in Coniston, Jake hinted, who might now find it convenient to emigrate to the far West.

Jethro’s face had not changed when Jake drove him out of Coniston the next morning.  Good Mr. Satterlee saw it, and felt that the visit he had wished to make would have been useless; Mr. Amos Cuthbert and Mr. Sam Price saw it, from a safe distance within the store, and it is a fact that Mr. Price seriously thought of taking Mr. Wheeler’s advice about a residence in the West; Mr. Cuthbert, of a sterner nature, made up his mind to be hung and quartered.  A few minutes before Jethro walked into his office over the livery stable, Senator Peleg Hartington would have denied, with that peculiar and mournful scorn of which he was master, that Jethro Bass could ever again have any influence over him.  Peleg was, indeed, at that moment preparing, in his own way, to make overtures to the party of Isaac D. Worthington.  Jethro walked into the office, leaving Jake below with Mr. Sherman; and Senator Hartington was very glad he had not made the overtures.  And when he accompanied Jethro to the station when he left for the capital, the senator felt that the eyes of men were upon him.