John reflected for some moments before he answered. “I am almost sorry you told me,” he said then. “It makes me wretched and ashamed to think of the injustice I have done him in my mind. It sounds brutal, in the light of what you have told me,--but I am going to confess it to you--I suspected all along that he intended to come some game over us about the farm; and now, instead----. Oh, it’s _too_ bad. I wish he could hear me!” John continued, with a glance toward the folding doors of the parlor, once more the chamber of death. “I wish he could know how I despise myself for having wronged him in my mind.” Isabel said nothing, but her responsive eyes seemed to express appreciation and sympathy. John lost all sense of wrath toward her as he went on: “Yes, from the very start we wronged him. We didn’t understand him. He was different from us--he was a man of the world, and we were countrymen, and we thought all the while that he held himself outside the family. I never gave him credit for good motives when he came to the farm; neither did Seth. We both thought he was playing his own game, for himself, and nobody else. And here, by George! he turns out to have had more brotherly feeling, more family feeling, than we ever had. It makes me miserable to think of it. It’ll break Seth’s heart, too; he’ll always torture himself with the thought that the last time he ever saw Albert alive they parted in anger.” The words were out before he realized their significance. He stopped short, and felt himself changing color as he looked at her to see whether she too was thinking about that terrible night. She made a motion as if to rise from her chair; then dropped back again and returned his inquiring glance with a fixed, intent look. “So you know something about _that_,” she said. “Did Seth tell you?” “Yes!” he answered, falteringly. “Seth told me. We had a long talk this forenoon. I think he told me about every thing there was to tell. In fact, that is mostly why I’ve come back now to see you.” She was silent, but her eyes seemed to John to be saying disagreeable things.