While Seth tried to divert his thoughts at the _Banner_ office by going over the freshly-arrived batch of morning dailies, and fastening his attention upon their political editorials and reports of speeches instead of their displayed and minute reports of the sensational tragedy in Tallman’s ravine--John Fairchild retraced his steps toward the farm. He had a definite purpose in his mind--to confront and silence Isabel--and he strove hard as he went along to plan how this should be done, and what he should say. He felt that his dominant emotion was wrath against this sister-in-law of his, and he said to himself as he strode along that he had never liked her. He could recall the summer a dozen years before when she came to the farm as a visiting cousin. He had been civil to her then, even companionable, for she was bright, spirited, in a word good company, but it seemed to him now that even then he had suspected the treachery ingrained in her nature--that he had been instinctively repelled by those hateful qualities, dormant in her girlhood, which were later to plot infidelity to one of his brothers, and lure into trouble, shame, perhaps even crime, the other. This latter phase of her work was peculiarly abominable in John’s eyes. He was not going to get up any special indignation on the first count of the indictment; a bachelor of nearly forty who marries a sentimental young girl does it at his own risk, John felt, and Albert had invited just this sort of thing by exiling her to a farm, and forcing her romantic mind to feed on itself. But that she should have selected Seth--her own husband’s brother, the Benjamin of the flock, a veritable child in such matters--to practise her arts upon, was grievously unpardonable. To be sure, Seth ought to have had more sense. But then John, habitually thinking of him as “the youngster,” thought he could see how he had been led on, step by step, never realizing the vicious tendency of it all, until he had all at once found himself on the brink of a swift descent. Then, to do the boy justice, he seemed to have stopped short, turned his back upon the siren, and for the sake of further security, irrevocably committed himself to Annie. He had been sadly weak in the earlier stages of the affair, no doubt; but this last course appeared manly and sensible--and wholly incompatible, too, with any idea of malice or crime on Seth’s part. What fault there was belonged-to the woman, and she should be told so, too, straight and sharp.