



Produced by Pat Castevans and David Widger





CONISTON

By Winston Churchill



BOOK III



CHAPTER I

One day, in the November following William Wetherell's death, Jethro Bass
astonished Coniston by moving to the little cottage in the village which
stood beside the disused tannery, and which had been his father's. It was
known as the tannery house. His reasons for this step, when at length
discovered, were generally commended: they were, in fact, a
disinclination to leave a girl of Cynthia's tender age alone on Thousand
Acre Hill while he journeyed on his affairs about the country. The Rev.
Mr. Satterlee, gaunt, red-faced, but the six feet of him a man and a
Christian, from his square-toed boots to the bleaching yellow hair around
his temples, offered to become her teacher. For by this time Cynthia had
exhausted the resources of the little school among the birches.

The four years of her life in the tannery house which are now briefly to
be chronicled were, for her, full of happiness and peace. Though the
young may sorrow, they do not often mourn. Cynthia missed her father; at
times, when the winds kept her wakeful at night, she wept for him. But
she loved Jethro Bass and served him with a devotion that filled his
heart with strange ecstasies--yes, and forebodings. In all his existence
he had never known a love like this. He may have imagined it once, back
in the bright days of his youth; but the dreams of its fulfilment had
fallen far short of the exquisite touch of the reality in which he now
spent his days at home. In summer, when she sat, in the face of all the
conventions of the village, reading under the butternut tree before the
house, she would feel his eyes upon her, and the mysterious yearning in
them would startle her. Often during her lessons with Mr. Satterlee in
the parlor of the parsonage she would hear a noise outside and perceive
Jethro leaning against the pillar. Both Cynthia and Mr. Satterlee knew
that