“You'll make him give the post-office to Cousin Eph, won't you, Uncle Jethro?” “Yes;” said Jethro, very simply, “I will.” He meditated awhile, and then said suddenly, “W-won't speak about it--will you, Cynthy?” “You know I won't,” she answered. Let it not be thought by any chance that Coniston was given over to revelry and late hours, even on the Fourth of July. By ten o'clock the lights were out in the tannery house, but Cynthia was not asleep. She sat at her window watching the shy moon peeping over Coniston ridge, and she was thinking, to be exact, of how much could happen in one short day and how little in a long month. She was aroused by the sound of wheels and the soft beat of a horse's hoofs on the dirt road: then came stifled laughter, and suddenly she sprang up alert and tingling. Her own name came floating to her through the darkness. The next thing that happened will be long remembered in Coniston. A tentative chord or two from a guitar, and then the startled village was listening with all its might to the voices of two young men singing “When I first went up to Harvard”--probably meant to disclose the identity of the serenaders, as if that were necessary! Coniston, never having listened to grand opera, was entertained and thrilled, and thought the rendering of the song better on the whole than the church choir could have done it, or even the quartette that sung at the Brampton celebrations behind the flowers. Cynthia had her own views on the subject. There were five other songs--Cynthia remembers all of them, although she would not confess such a thing. “Naughty, naughty Clara,” was another one; the other three were almost wholly about love, some treating it flippantly, others seriously--this applied to the last one, which had many farewells in it. Then they went away, and the crickets and frogs on Coniston Water took up the refrain. Although the occurrence was unusual,--it might almost be said epoch-making,--Jethro did not speak of it until they had reached the sparkling heights of Thousand Acre Hill the next morning. Even then he did not look at Cynthia. “Know who that was last night, Cynthy?” he inquired, as though the matter were a casual one. “I believe,” said Cynthia heroically, “I believe it was a boy named Somers Duncan-and Bob Worthington.” “Er--Bob Worthington,” repeated Jethro, but said nothing more.