"Don't excite yourself, Sallie," he said, gravely, and with a certain air of authority in his manner. "You'll bring on one of your headaches--it will all come right. Come, my dear, let us go into the house. People are passing, and will wonder." She followed him back into the drawing-room, his hand still held fast in hers. "Promise me one thing," she said, stopping at the door and looking up into his eyes, "and I won't say another word. Please do nothing more about the farm unless you let me know. Let me think first how I can help. It will all come out right, as you say, but it will be because we will make it come right, dear." She drew his face down toward her with one hand and kissed him tenderly on his cheek. Then she bade him good-night and resumed her seat by the window, to watch for Oliver's return. Try as she would, she could not banish her fears. The news of Richard's intention to pay off the loan by selling the farm had sent a shudder through her heart such as she had never before experienced, for that which she had dreaded had come to pass. Loyal as she had always been to her husband, and proud as she was of his genius and accomplishments, and sympathetic as they were in all else that their lives touched upon, her keen, penetrating mind had long since divined the principal fault that lay at the bottom of her husband's genius. She saw that the weak point in his make-up was not his inventive quality, but his inability to realize any practical results from his inventions when perfected. She saw, too, with equal certainty how rapidly their already slender means were being daily depleted in costly experiments--many of which were abandoned as soon as tried, and she knew full well that the end was but a question of time. Even when he had abandoned the law, and had exchanged his office near the Court-house for his shop in the back yard, and had given his library to his young students, she had not despaired; she still had faith in his genius. She had first become uneasy when the new steam cut-off had failed to reimburse him. When this catastrophe was followed by his losing every dollar of his interest in the improved cotton-gin, because of his generosity to a brother inventor, her uneasiness had become the keenest anxiety. And now here was this new motor, in which he seemed more absorbed than in any other of his inventions. This was to plunge them into still greater difficulties and jeopardize even the farm.