Clerk Gum returned home, bearing to his wife and Calne the final tidings which crushed out all hope. Mrs. Gum sank into a state of wild despair. At first it almost seemed to threaten loss of reason. Her son had been her sole idol, and the idol was shattered. But to witness unreasonably violent grief in others always has a counteracting effect on our own, and Mr. Gum soothed his sorrow and brought philosophy to his aid. "Look you," said he, one day, sharply to his wife, when she was crying and moaning, "there's two sides to every calamity,--a bright and a dark 'un;" for Mr. Gum was not in the habit of treating his wife, in the privacy of their domestic circle, to the quality-speech kept for the world. "He is gone, and we can't help it; we'd have welcomed him home if we could, and killed the fatted calf, but it was God's will that it shouldn't be. There may be a blessing in it, after all. Who knows but he might have broke out again, and brought upon us what he did before, or worse? For my part, I should never have been without the fear; night and morning it would always have stood before me; not to be driven away. As it is, I am at rest." She--the wife--took her apron from her eyes and looked at him with a sort of amazed anger. "Gum! do you forget that he had left off his evil ways, and was coming home to be a comfort to us?" "No, I don't forget it," returned Mr. Gum. "But who was to say that the mood would last? He might have got through his gold, however much it was, and then--. As it is, Nance Gum, we can sleep quiet in our beds, free from _that_ fear." Clerk Gum was not, on the whole, a model of suavity in the domestic fold. The first blow that had fallen upon him seemed to have affected his temper; and his helpmate knew from experience that whenever he called her "Nance" his mood was at its worst. Suppressing a sob, she spoke reproachfully. "It's my firm belief, Gum, and has been all along, that you cared more for your good name among men than you did for the boy." "Perhaps I did," he answered, by way of retort. "At any rate, it might have been better for him in the long-run if we--both you and me--hadn't cared for him quite so foolishly in his childhood; we spared the rod and we spoiled the child. That's over, and--" "It's _all_ over," interrupted Mrs. Gum; "over for ever in this world. Gum, you are very hard-hearted." "And," he continued, with composure, "we may hope now to live down in time the blow he brought upon us, and hold up our heads again in the face of Calne. We couldn't have done that while he lived." "We couldn't?" "No. Just dry up your useless tears, Nancy; and try to think that all's for the best."