He had been proud of his children. But now all was falling into ruin around him. For hours he would sit with his hands in his pockets, scarcely daring to think, for the misery of the thoughts that came crowding out the moment the smallest chink was opened in their cage. He had become short, I do not say rough, in his speech to his wife. He would break into sudden angry complaints against Hester for not coming home. The sight of the children was a pain to him. Though he had been told nothing of the cause of his parents’ misery, Mark had sympathy and insight enough to perceive that something was badly amiss. He would sometimes stand and gaze at his father, but the solemn, far-off, starry look of the boy’s eyes never seemed to disturb him. He loved his father as few boys love, and yet had a certain dread of him and discomfort in his presence, which he could not have accounted for, and which would vanish at once when he spoke to him.

He had never quite recovered from the effects of his near drowning. He had grown thinner and his food did not seem to nourish him. His being seemed slowly slipping away from its hold on the world. He was full of dreams and fancies, all of the higher order of things where love is the law. He spent many happy hours alone, seeming to the ordinary eye to be doing nothing, because his doing was with the unseen. When such as Mark die, we may well imagine them wanted for a special work in the world to which they go. Some of us may one day be ashamed of our outcry after our dead when we discover why they were called.

The mother looked at the child, but said nothing. Sorrow was now the element of her soul. Cornelius had destroyed the family heart.

Mark seldom talked about his brother. Before he went away he had begun to shrink from him a little, as with some instinct of an inward separation. He would stand a little way off and look at him as if he were a stranger in whom he was interested, and as if he himself were trying to determine what attitude to assume toward him. When he heard that he was seriously ill, the tears came into his eyes, but he did not speak.

To the mother, it seemed that the boy must be looking toward a region to which she herself had begun to look with longing. The way her husband took their grief made them no more a family, but a mere household. He brooded alone and said nothing. They did not share sorrow as they had shared joy.

At last came a letter from Hester saying that in two days she hoped to start with Corney to bring him home. The mother read the letter, and with a faded gleam of joy on her countenance, passed it to her husband. He took it, glanced at it, threw it from him, rose, and left the room. For an hour his wife heard him pacing up and down his study; then he took his hat and stick and went out. What he might have resolved to do had Corney been returning in good health, I do not know—possibly kick him out of the house for his impudence in daring to show his face there. But even this wrathful father could hardly turn from his sickly child—even if he was the greatest scoundrel under the sun. But that still could not make him acknowledge him! Swine were the natural companions of the prodigal, and the sooner he was with them the better! Truly the heart of the father had turned from his son. The Messiah came to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children. Strange it should have ever needed doing! But it needs doing still.