'Why, it is never you, Miss Ross?' she cried in a subdued crescendo. 'Whatever will father say when he knows it is you? There's a deal happened, Miss Ross, and I am in a shake still when I think of the turn he gave me only the other night. I heard the knock, and opened the door, as it might be to you, and when I saw who it was--at least----Why, father! father! what are you shoving me away for?' For Mr. O'Brien had come out of the parlour, and had taken his daughter rather unceremoniously by both shoulders, and had moved her out of his way. 'You leave that to me, Priscilla,' he said in rather a peculiar voice; and here his great hand grasped Audrey's. 'You have done a good deed, Miss Ross, in coming here this afternoon, for I am glad and proud to see you;' and then, in a voice he tried in vain to steady: 'Susan was right--she always was, bless her!--and Mat has come home!' CHAPTER XXX 'I COULD NOT STAND IT ANY LONGER, TOM' 'The beautiful souls of the world have an art of saintly alchemy, by which bitterness is converted into kindness, the gall of human experience into gentleness, ingratitude into benefits, insults into pardon.'--AMIEL. 'Mat has come home!' Audrey uttered an exclamation of surprise and pleasure as she heard this unexpected intelligence. 'Is it really true? Oh, Mr. O'Brien, I am so glad--so very glad! When did he come? Why did you not send for me? My dear old friend, how happy you must be to get him back after all these years of watching and waiting!' A curiously sad expression crossed Mr. O'Brien's rugged face as Audrey spoke in her softest and most sympathetic voice. 'Ay, I am not denying that it is happiness to get the lad back,' he returned, in a slow, ruminative fashion, as though he found it difficult to shape his thoughts into words; 'but it is a mixed sort of happiness, too. Come in and sit down, Miss Ross--Mat has gone out for a prowl, as he calls it--and I will tell you how it all happened while Prissy sees to the tea;' and as Mrs. Baxter withdrew at this very broad hint, Mr. O'Brien drew up one of the old-fashioned elbow-chairs to the fire, and then, seating himself, took up his pipe from the hob, and looked thoughtfully into the empty bowl. 'Things get terribly mixed in this world,' he continued, 'and pleasures mostly lose their flavour before one has a chance of enjoying them. I am thinking that the father of the Prodigal Son did not find it all such plain sailing after the feast was over, and he had time to look into things more closely. That elder brother would not be the pleasantest of companions for many a long day; he would still have a sort of grudge, like my Prissy here.' 'Oh, I hope not!'