She had but strength to reach the side of the bed, and fell senseless upon it. He started up with a sting of self-accusation—he had killed her, exacting from her a promise that by no word would she welcome the wanderer that night. For she would not have her husband imagine in his bitterness that she loved the erring son more than the father whose heart he had all but broken, and had promised. She was, in truth, nearly as anxious about the one as the other, for was not the unforgivingness of the one as bad—was it not even worse than the theft of the other.

Her husband lifted her, laid her on the bed, and proceeded to administer the restoratives he now knew better than any other how to employ. In a little while he was relieved, her eyelids began to tremble. “My baby!” she murmured, and the tears began to flow.

“Thank God!” said Mr. Raymount, and got her to bed.

But strange to say, for all his stern fulfilment of duty, he did not feel fit to lie down beside his wife. He would watch. She might have another bad turn!

From the exhaustion that followed excess of feeling, she slept. He sat watchful by the fire. She was his only friend, he said, and now she and he were no more of one mind! Never until now had they had difference!

Hester and the major got Corney to bed, and instantly he was fast asleep. The major arranged himself to pass the night by the fire; Hester went to the adjoining room where she, too, was presently fast asleep. There was no gnawing worm of duty undone or wrong unpardoned in her bosom to keep her awake.

The night began differently with the two watchers. The major was troubled in his mind at what seemed the hardheartedness of the mother, for he loved her with a true brotherly affection. He had not seen her looking in at the door. He did not know the cause of her appearing so withdrawn.

He brooded long over the thing, but by degrees forgot her and fell to thinking about his own mother.

As the major sat thinking, the story came back to him which she had told him and his brothers, all now gone but himself, as they sat around her one Sunday evening in their room, about the boy who was tired of being at home, and asked his father for money to go away, and how his father gave it him, thinking it better he should go than grumble at the best he could give him. The boy grew naughty and spent his money in buying things that were not worth having, and in eating and drinking with greedy, coarse people till at last he had nothing left to buy food with and had to feed swine to earn something, and how at last he fell to thinking about going home.

It all came back to the major’s mind just as his mother used to tell it—how the poor prodigal, ragged and dirty and hungry, had set out for home, and how his father had seen him coming a great way off and knew him at once, and ran out to meet him, and welcomed him and kissed him. True, the prodigal came home repentant, but the father did not wait to know that, but ran to meet him without condition.