Annie smiled, a little faintly, as if her heart were not altogether in it, and replied, “Yes, to be sure we will.” She added, to Seth, “I won’t say goodbye. I suppose I shall see you again.” He assented, and went to the door with her, and stood on the steps watching her as she walked away in the autumn dusk. Decidedly she _was_ a pretty girl! The Pratts, father and daughter, consented upon the shadowiest suggestion of an invitation to stay and partake of the picked-up Sunday tea, and that involved their spending the evening. Aunt Sabrina came in, and the talk was dreary and general. So “Jeff Briggs” and his amatory affairs went over to the morrow. In the morning Seth walked over to Thessaly and saw John. The interview depressed him. John had had some idea of following the _Chronicle’s_ lead, and bolting the State ticket, but the county politicians had bullied him out of the thing by threatening the destruction of the job-printing business connected with the _Banner of Liberty_, and the boycotting of the paper itself. All his inclinations, too, were toward Ansdell in the Congressional race; but Albert had loaned him some money, and, beside, he couldn’t see his way clear to disregarding, openly at least, the fraternal tie. He was consequently in a savage mood. “I’m thinking of taking out the head-line of the paper this week,” he growled, with a sardonic humor, “and putting in instead a cut of a runaway slave, with a bundle over his shoulder, which is in the job-room here, left over from the days when there was slavery in New York State, and masters used to advertise in the old paper for fugitives. ‘_Banner of Liberty_ ’ indeed! By heaven, it ought to be ‘_Banner of Bondage!_” There was no comfort or profit in discussing the situation, either general or local, with John. He neither knew nor cared, he swore, what Albert’s chances were to dissolve the deadlock on the morrow. He might or he mightn’t; it was all one to him, and apparently to the party, who were the----! Seth left John to his bad temper and language, and returned to the farm in the afternoon. A telegram from Albert awaited him. _“New York, Oct. 19.--If possible conclude business, home to-night, at latest to-morrow morning. Wait for me at all hazards.--Albert.”_ To provide against a possible delay over Tuesday, Seth devoted the afternoon, and the earlier part of the evening, to writing matter for his paper, which Dana was to convey to Thessaly for the early morning train, when he went to the cheese-factory. If Albert was coming at all that night, he would arrive about eight. Nine o’clock came. Aunt Sabrina, after sitting in stem silence by the living-room stove for an hour or two, looking at the wall-paper as her brother Lemuel had been won’t to do, went up to bed with a frigid “good night.” The farm people had all retired with the chickens, long before. Scarcely raising his eyes from his writing, Seth remarked: