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Updated: June 4, 2025
He was thinking of it now, even as it had been in his mind that winter's evening when Cynthia had come to Coniston and had surprised him with that look of terrible loneliness on his face. Yes, and he was thinking of Cynthia. When, indeed, had he not been thinking of her? How many tunes had he rehearsed the events in the tannery house for they were the events of his life now.
Twice Cynthia, during the week that followed, got halfway down the slope of the parsonage hill, the book under her arm, on her way to the tannery; twice went back, tears of humiliation and self-pity in her eyes at the thought that she should make advances to a man, and that man the tanner's son.
I wish ter hell ye'd get after that tannery; can't hardly breathe here sometimes." "That's what we were looking after; had some complaints lately." "Sure, I been kickin' 'bout it for a month. You fellers have another beer on me." He walked back toward the bar, pausing an instant to whisper a word to the taller man who still stood there staring moodily at the table.
After loading up at the store, Lem Hallowell, instead of heading for Brampton, drove to the tannery house, left his horses standing as he ran in, and presently emerged with a little cowhide trunk that bore the letter W. Following the trunk came a radiant Cynthia, following Cynthia, Jethro Bass in a stove-pipe hat, with a carpetbag, and hobbling after Jethro, Ephraim Prescott, with another carpet-bag.
Cynthia, driving back from Brampton in the gig, smiled at Aunt Lucy in the window, but she did not so much as glance at the tannery house farther on. The tannery house, be it known, was the cottage where Jethro dwelt, and which had belonged to Nathan, his father; and the tannery sheds were at some distance behind it, nearer Coniston Water.
The years she had spent in his study had not gone for nothing, for he who has cherished the bud can predict what the flower will be, and Mr. Satterlee knew her spiritually better than any one else in Coniston. He had heard of her return, and had walked over to the tannery house, full of fears, the remembrance of those expressions of simple faith in Jethro coming back to his mind.
And the next Saturday, when she rode off to Brampton, some one looked through the cracks in the tannery shed and saw that she wore her new bonnet. There is scarcely a pleasanter place in the world than Brampton Street on a summer's day.
Expressing in a whisper to Sambo, his determination to follow, he desired him to make for the shore, near the tannery, beneath the shadow of which he might be secure, while he himself advanced, and traced the movements of the mysterious wanderer. "Oh Massa Geral," urged the old man in the same whisper his teeth chattering with fear "for Hebben' sake e no go ashore.
Satterlee was as good as his word, for he was seated in the stage when it drew up at the tannery house, ready to go to Brampton. And as they drove away Cynthia took one last look at Jethro standing on the porch.
Then they drew up before the tannery house, and Cynthia leaped out of the buggy and held out her hand to the painter with a smile. "It was very good of you to take me," she said.
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