How, she mused, would it affect him? Had the blow been so great that he
would relinquish those practices which had become a lifelong habit with
him? Would he (she caught her breath at this thought) would he abandon
that struggle with Isaac D. Worthington in which he was striving to
maintain the mastery of the state by those very practices? Cynthia hated
Mr. Worthington. The term is not too strong, and it expresses her
feeling. But she would have got down on her knees on the board floor of
the kitchen that very night and implored Jethro to desist from that
contest, if she could. She remembered how, in her innocence, she had
believed that the people had given Jethro his power,--in those days when
she was so proud of that very power,--now she knew that he had wrested it
from them. What more supreme sacrifice could he make than to relinquish
it! Ah, there was a still greater sacrifice that Jethro was to make, had
she known it.

He came and stood over her by the stove, and she looked up into his face
with these yearnings in her eyes. Yes, she would have thrown herself on
her knees, if she could. But she could not. Perhaps he would abandon that
struggle. Perhaps--perhaps his heart was broken. And could a man with a
broken heart still fight on? She took his hand and pressed it against her
face, and he felt that it was wet with her tears.

"B-better go to bed now, Cynthy," he said; "m-must be worn out--m-must be
worn out."

He stooped and kissed her on the forehead. It was thus that Jethro Bass
accepted his sentence.