Cynthia's changes of moods,--which were indeed the weather for him, and
when storms came he sat with his back to them, waiting for the sunshine.
He had long ceased proposing marriage, in the firm belief that Cynthia
would set the day in her own good time. Thereby he was saved much
suffering.

The summer flew on apace, for Coniston. Fragrant hay was cut on hillsides
won from rock and forest, and Coniston Water sang a gentler melody--save
when the clouds floated among the spruces on the mountain and the rain
beat on the shingles. During the still days before the turn of the
year,--days of bending fruit boughs, crab-apples glistening red in the
soft sunlight,--rumor came from Brampton to wrinkle the forehead of Moses
Hatch as he worked among his father's orchards.

The rumor was of a Mr. Isaac Dudley Worthington, a name destined to make
much rumor before it was to be carved on the marble. Isaac D.
Worthington, indeed, might by a stretch of the imagination be called the
pioneer of all the genus to be known in the future as City Folks, who
were, two generations later, to invade the country like a devouring army
of locusts.

At that time a stranger in Brampton was enough to set the town agog. But
a young man of three and twenty, with an independent income of four
hundred dollars a year!--or any income at all not derived from his own
labor--was unheard of. It is said that when the stage from over Truro Gap
arrived in Brampton Street a hundred eyes gazed at him unseen, from
various ambushes, and followed him up the walk to Silas Wheelock's, where
he was to board. In half an hour Brampton knew the essentials of Isaac
Worthington's story, and Sam Price was on his way with it to Coniston for
distribution at Jonah Winch's store.