The evening before the nephew's departure on his return journey his uncle talked with him until late in the night and told him frankly that he was going to make the young man his sole heir. But he made his nephew promise repeatedly not to tell any person, not even his parents, what the uncle had decided to do. The return of that young man, when viewed in the light of subsequent events, must have been a startling experience to his dear, patient, plodding old parents. His manners, his thoughts, his estimation of values had undergone a violent change. The old farmhouse seemed to him to be smaller than ever, the furniture was rude and cheap, the food was coarse and unpalatable, the horse was shamefully old, his father's overalls were disgracefully stained, and his mother's old apron was fit only for rags! The home was lonesome and uncomfortable. He sat by the fire on the cool evenings, silently picturing in his wild imagination what he would do with his millions, and sometimes he admitted, for an instant, the hope that his uncle would die very soon. He abandoned the idea of going on with his college education. He reasoned that money can buy anything and assured himself that he could hire men to think for him if he should need them. Letters from his fiancée became a bore. She was too plain and too unsophisticated to adorn his future mansion. He could not think of marrying a woman of whom he would be ashamed in that fashionable group to which he would be attached. He finally broke the engagement, telling her that he had discovered that he did not love her enough sincerely to marry her. The lady became ill and was suddenly killed in an accident in the sanitarium. The young man would not work. He refused to help his father on the old place and bluntly refused to help his mother when she was about her household tasks alone. All was changed. He was no longer their son. The father felt the impression of mystery about the son's strange behavior and suggested to his wife that the boy showed symptoms of insanity. Not many months passed before the son left his home to take an easy position as a clerk in Boston. But he soon left that and went to sea in a steamer, where he acted as assistant to the steward. At Bordeaux, France, he made the acquaintance of two American young men whose wealthy parents supplied them with funds to travel, but evidently did so to keep the rascals away from home. Then his downward course became a reckless race. A few years later the uncle heard or read that his nephew was sentenced to three months in the workhouse for drunkenness, and he changed his will, leaving all his estate to benevolent institutions. From that time the unrepentant prodigal disappeared from the knowledge or care of his old neighbors. Both his parents went down to the grave in bitter sorrow before his reform. The death of the mother was only a few weeks later than the death of the father.