Yes, Cynthia’s life was very bitter that summer, with but little hope on the horizon of it.  Her thoughts were divided between Bob and Jethro.  Many a night she lay awake resolving to write to Jethro, even to go to him, but when morning came she could not bring herself to do so.  I do not think it was because she feared that he might believe her appeal would be made in behalf of Bob’s father.  Knowing Jethro as she did, she felt that it would be useless, and she could not bear to make it in vain; if the memory of that evening in the tannery shed would not serve, nothing would serve.  And again—­he had gone to avenge her.

It was inevitable that she should hear tidings from the capital.  Isaac Worthington’s own town was ringing with it.  And as week after week of that interminable session went by, the conviction slowly grew upon Brampton that its first citizen had been beaten by Jethro Bass.  Something of Mr. Worthington’s affairs was known:  the mills, for instance, were not being run to their full capacity.  And then had come the definite news that Mr. Worthington was beaten, a local representative having arrived straight from the rotunda.  Cynthia overheard Lem Hallowell telling it to Ephraim, and she could not for the life of her help rejoicing, though she despised herself for it.  Isaac Worthington was humbled now, and Jethro had humbled him to avenge her.  Despite her grief over his return to that life, there was something to compel her awe and admiration in the way he had risen and done this thing after men had fallen from him.  Her mother had had something of these same feelings, without knowing why.

People who had nothing but praise for him before were saying hard things about Isaac Worthington that night.  When the baron is defeated, the serfs come out of their holes in the castle rock and fling their curses across the moat.  Cynthia slept but little, and was glad when the day came to take her to her scholars, to ease her mind of the thoughts which tortured it.

And then, when she stopped at the post-office to speak to Ephraim on her way homeward in the afternoon, she heard men talking behind the partition, and she stood, as one stricken, listening beside the window.  Other tidings had come in the shape of a telegram.  The first rumor had been false.  Brampton had not yet received the details, but the Consolidation Bill had gone into the House that morning, and would be a law before the week was out.  A part of it was incomprehensible to Cynthia, but so much she had understood.  She did not wait to speak to Ephraim, and she was going out again when a man rushed past her and through the partition door.  Cynthia paused instinctively, for she recognized him as one of the frequenters of the station and a bearer of news.

“Jethro’s come home, boys,” he shouted; “come in on the four o’clock, and went right off to Coniston.  Guess he’s done for, this time, for certain.  Looks it.  By Godfrey, he looks eighty!  Callate his day’s over, from the way the boys talked on the train.”