"No, father, I think mother is right. I'm sure I never can love another home as I love this. I should feel dreadfully to hear you talk of selling. I never could love another home." "Not if you had George there, to increase your happiness?" "Another home to call father's and mother's I mean; where I could return and enjoy all the old things that are grown so fast to my heart. But why do you talk so, father?" "That I was going to ask. You have no intention of leaving here, I hope, and why _do_ you talk so? You act wild." "You began the talk, Julia, and I was seeing to what a stretch you would carry your feelings. But here, it is time I was out in the field at the plough again, and I will leave you now, to think it all over, and see if there is nothing on earth that would tempt you to sell the old home." A drop of cold water, or the slightest shake will interrupt the reallest seeming dream; and half of this conversation would have brought Fabens out of what but a day before seemed a splendid reality. He went to his plough in the light of his awakened senses, and walked all the way on the actual, sober ground. His gorgeous air castles vanished like a train of fleeting clouds. A walk in the dirty furrow seemed long before night, a very pleasant and refreshing pastime; and he shuddered with shame more than once to think he had been so extravagant in many of the thoughts, that were set afloat by the merchant's offer. He came to himself that afternoon; and sitting down to tea, with a glance first at the north meadow and the white ash shade-trees blooming there; then at the east woods and orchard; then at the blue fringes of the mountains lifted sublimely before him in the south; then at the crystal Cayuga in the west and the green hills sleeping beyond; he exclaimed, "I must agree with you, Julia; we have views from our doors and windows as handsome as any I know of, and the old farm still looks very good to me." During that afternoon, however, Mrs. Fabens had been thinking of Fairbanks and Frisbie, and it occurred to her that they might have said something to her husband about selling his farm; and from that, her mind returned to the borrowed notes. It had been her expressed desire that he would not contract a liability for any one, of more than fifty dollars, without security; and now she felt painfully curious to know, if the former notes loaned had been all taken up, why they had not been brought to her husband, that he might positively know that his liability had ceased. But Fabens was so magnanimous he had thought it unmanly to ask security of the merchant, or distrust the assurances of men who had dealt so handsomely as they.