“All hell can’t prevent it!” The words came forth in an explosion of wrath. Albert stamped his foot and clenched his fists as Seth had never seen him do before. He tapped his breast three or four times, significantly, as if there were something in the pocket to which he was referring--Seth remembered the gesture long afterward--and repeated that his nomination was assured. He seemed to dislike his passion, and strive to restrain it, but the choleric vein between his brows grew more swollen, and his black, keen eyes flashed more angrily than ever, as he strode up and down before the stove. “Yes, and I’ll be elected too! All the white-livered hounds in Adams County, from my own brother up, shall not stop me! I’ll stump the district every night and day till election. I’ll speak in Tecumseh--yes, in Tecumseh, at the biggest meeting money and organisation can get together--and I’ll handle this whole bolting business so’s to warm the hearts of honest men all over the State. By God! I’ll shake Workman as a terrier shakes a rat, in view and hearing of his whole community! Won’t he squirm though! And won’t the crowd enjoy having him shown up! And _you_”--there followed some savage personal abuse, profane in form--“after to-morrow morning, never let me lay eyes on you again!” “It is not for the pleasure of seeing you that I come here, ever,” Seth retorted, the words coming quick and fierce. “Be sure I’d never trouble you again, if you were the only one in this house!” The lawyer’s eyes sparkled with a sardonic meaning, and Seth, as he saw it, bit his tongue with impatience at the thoughtless form of his speech; for he read in this cold, glancing light that nothing had been lost upon his brother’s perception when he entered the room. There was a full minute’s silence, in which the two men faced each other. Albert was busy thinking how to put most effectively the things he was now moved to say. At last he spoke, coolly, incisively once more, while Seth, flushed and anxious, pretended to regulate the flame of the lamp. “Yes, I have no illusions about the motive of your visits to the farm. I am not blind; even if I were, others about the house are not. I am not going to say what you are doubtless expecting. I might point out to you that a young man who comes to a brother’s house--I will say nothing of the debt of gratitude he owes him--and steals chances to make love to that brother’s wife, is a pitiful cur. Stop!”--for Seth had straightened himself angrily at this epithet, despite his consciousness of self-reproach.