“I mind,” said Saunders emphatically, while a sudden yearning seemed to contend on his harsh face with the stern condemnation of justice; “woman, ye dinna ken! If he had been less to me--ay, if he _was_ less to me now, think ye I wad have done what I have done. It’s nae use speaking; do I no see the tears in the wife’s auld e’en morning and nicht? do I no ken wha she’s aye thinking o’ and yearning ower like a weak woman as she is? but I say he shall never cross again the door of the honest house he has brought shame upon--never!” There was a stern fire in the old man’s eye, and he went hastily out to his work as if he felt ashamed of having been drawn into this revelation of his household grief. He was, naturally, a man with very strong and passionate feelings, and one of those harsh and powerful minds, which at any cost of misery to themselves will cling to their severe and abstract conceptions of justice. His only child, a youth of some promise in their humble sphere, had fallen a few years before into the brutalizing practices of rural vice. He had formed discreditable connections, involved himself in the worst company that Fendie could afford, and to crown all his offences, had finally, in a moment of temptation, stolen some trifling sum from his master. Saunders and his wife were in the sober meridian of life when they married, and this lad Peter was the son of their old age, the secret idol of the old man’s vehement heart. But no one knew the might of love which the somewhat stern father lavished upon the son; and when his criminal folly came to its climax, the mother, the neighbours, the injured master himself, stood aside with awe while Saunders repudiated and disowned the unhappy culprit. _They_ called him harsh and cruel; but the guilty youth himself, even while he trembled under his father’s sentence, discovered for the first time the strong love which in its agony banished him from its home and presence. A kindred strength awoke in the son’s undisciplined spirit. Seeing how bitterly the hopes set on his head had been disappointed, in bitter repentance he turned from the closed door, eager to leave the place of his early sins, and in some strange unknown country to conquer, by the help of God, himself and his fate. For two long years now he had been absent--where his father did not know, nor would inquire; and still in the bitterness of the strong love which burned within him, the old man repudiated the prodigal.