He paused abruptly, his eyes going out of the window, pointing with a long finger at a grizzled man crossing the street with a yellow and red horse blanket thrown over his shoulders.
“That man, Judge Baker, holding court in this town now, Bass owns body and soul.”
“And the horse blanket?” Wetherell queried, irresistibly.
Dudley Worthington did not smile.
“Take my advice, Mr. Wetherell, and pay off that note somehow.” An odor of the stable pervaded the room, and a great unkempt grizzled head and shoulders, horse blanket and all, were stuck into it.
“Mornin', Dudley,” said the head, “busy?”
“Come right in, Judge,” answered Mr. Worthington. “Never too busy to see you.” The head disappeared.
“Take my advice, Mr. Wetherell.”
And then the storekeeper went into the bank.
For some moments he stood dazed by what he had heard, the query ringing in his head: Why had Jethro Bass bought that note? Did he think that the storekeeper at Coniston would be of use to him, politically? The words Chester Perkins had spoken that morning came back to Wetherell as he stood in the door. And how was he to meet Jethro Bass again with no money to pay even the interest on the note? Then suddenly he missed Cynthia, hurried out, and spied her under the trees on the common so deep in conversation with a boy that she did not perceive him until he spoke to her. The boy looked up, smiling frankly at something Cynthia had said to him. He had honest, humorous eyes, and a browned, freckled face, and was, perhaps, two years older than Cynthia.