“Only God knows whether or not we shall ever see each other again. But I shall always love you, and as long as we both live I shall treasure in my heart the belief that you still love me. Good-by, dear heart.” “At last, it is all over,” Rhoda said to herself when she had read the letter. “He sees, at last, as I did so long ago, that there is no hope for us. No--he sees none, now, but I can a little. John Brown has brought the war ten years nearer, father says, and any time it may come. And the war will end slavery. But it’s best not to hope too much.” She took out the box of his letters and read them all over again, touching them tenderly and kissing the withered rose. “I’d better burn them all now,” she told herself, “and try not to think so much about it after this.” With such pain in her heart as might have been in Abraham’s when he led Isaac to the altar, she carried her little love treasure to the fire. But even as she held it poised over the flames her resolution failed her. It was too much a part of herself and she could not do it. The little box was put away again in its hiding place and in the months that followed, whenever the ache in her breast would not be hushed in any other way, she solaced her love and longing by reading the letters over and over again, until she almost knew them, word for word. CHAPTER XXVI A year and a half and more went by before Rhoda again saw Delavan. The campaign of 1860, with its grim earnestness and sober exaltation, had passed. She had been stirred by it to her heart’s core, as had all men and women of the North, and had shared her father’s satisfaction over the result. Hers was indeed an even deeper and gladder satisfaction than his, for to passionate abhorrence of slavery and the belief that now was the beginning of its end was added her secret small hope that afterward might come the fulfilment of her long denied love. “We mustn’t forget, Rhoda,” her father said as they talked over the results of the election, “that probably only a rather small percentage of those who voted for Lincoln want to have slavery abolished in the states where it already exists. They really think the national government has no right to interfere. But if there is war, and undoubtedly there will be, a man of Lincoln’s shrewd common-sense will know that by freeing the slaves he will cut off the South’s right hand. With such a man as he is in the president’s chair I feel confident, though a good many abolitionists don’t, that we can look forward to the end of slavery.”