In the meantime Cynthia had reached her home, her cheeks still smarting, conscious that people had stared at her. This much, of course, she knew--that Brampton believed Bob Worthington to be in love with her: and the knowledge at such times made her so miserable that the thought of Jethro's isolation alone deterred her from asking Miss Lucretia Penniman for a position in Boston. For she wrote to Miss Lucretia about her life and her reading, as that lady had made her promise to do. She sat down now at the cherry chest of drawers that was also a desk, to write: not to pour out her troubles, for she never had done that,--but to calm her mind by drawing little character sketches of her pupils. But she had only written the words, “My dear Miss Lucretia,” when she looked out of the window and saw Judge Graves coming up the path, and ran to open the door for him. “How do you do, Judge?” she said, for she recognized Mr. Graves as one of her few friends in Brampton. “I have sent to Boston for the new reader, but it has not come.” The judge took her hand and pressed it and led her into the little sitting room. His face was very stern, but his eyes, which had flung fire at Mr. Dodd, looked at her with a vast compassion. Her heart misgave her. “My dear,” he said,--it was long since the judge had called any woman “my dear,”--“I have bad news for you. The committee have decided that you cannot teach any longer in the Brampton school.” “Oh, Judge,” she answered, trying to force back the tears which would come, “I have tried so hard. I had begun to believe that I could fill the place.” “Fill the place!” cried the judge, startling her with his sudden anger. “No woman in the state can fill it better than you.” “Then why am I dismissed?” she asked breathlessly. The judge looked at her in silence, his blue lips quivering. Sometimes even he found it hard to tell the truth. And yet he had come to tell it, that she might suffer less. He remembered the time when Isaac D. Worthington had done him a great wrong. “You are dismissed,” he said, “because Mr. Worthington has come home, and because the two other members of the committee are dogs and cowards.” Mr. Graves never minced matters when he began, and his voice shook with passion. “If Mr. Errol had examined you, and you had your certificate, it might have been different. Errol is not a sycophant. Worthington does not hold his mortgage.” “Mortgage!” exclaimed Cynthia. The word always struck terror to her soul. “Mr. Worthington holds Mr. Hill's mortgage,” said Mr. Graves, more than ever beside himself at the sight of her suffering. “That man's tyranny is not to be borne. We will not give up, Cynthia. I will fight him in this matter if it takes my last ounce of strength, so help me God!”