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.

She wondered she had not remembered to inquire about the old notes
before, and was troubled till she could ask the question. At night she
introduced the subject. "It may be all right," said she, "but
something keeps whispering to me, that trouble awaits us. We have a
comfortable property, as much as anybody ought to desire I know, but we
have all worked hard and honestly to get it, and it would be hard to be
defrauded of a hundred dollars. I would rather give all we can spare
to the poor and needy, than to be defrauded of it."

"I confess to you, mother, what till this week I never felt," said
Fanny with emotion; "I begin to lose confidence. I fear father is
deceived.