Perhaps mildness might have worked well with the self-willed boy, but his father knew nothing but stern command and prompt obedience in family management; and so the son daily fell away, until came the inevitable day when his wrong-doing reached a climax and he left his father's roof forever. It was on a Thanksgiving-Day, fifteen years ago, that the boy Samson, then seventeen years old, was brought home drunk and bleeding. He had passed the previous night at a ball at the tavern, against the express command of his father, who would have gone to fetch him away, but that he could not bear to enter upon a scene he thought so wicked, and especially upon such an errand. When the dance was over, the boy had lingered at the bar, drinking glass after glass, until he got into a fight with the bully of the village, whom he thrashed within an inch of his life, and then he had sat down in a small side-room with a few choice spirits, with the avowed purpose of getting drunk over his victory. He had got drunk, "gloriously drunk" his friends at the tavern styled it, and had been carried in that state home. Oh, the bitterness of the misery of that Thanksgiving-Day to Jacob Newell! He may live a hundred years and never know such another. The next day Samson awoke from a wretched stupor to find himself weak, nervous, and suffering from a blinding headache. In this condition his father forced him to the barn, and there, with a heavy raw-hide, flogged him without mercy. That night Samson Newell disappeared, and was thenceforward seen no more in the village. The same night one of the village stores was entered, the door of an ancient safe wrenched open, and something over a hundred dollars in specie taken therefrom. So that on Samson Newell's head rested the crime of filial disobedience, and the suspicion, amounting, with nearly all, to a certainty, that he had added burglary to his other wrong-doing. His name was published in the papers throughout the county, together with a personal description and the offer of a reward for his arrest and return. But as he was never brought back nor heard of more, the matter gradually died away and was forgotten by most in the village; the more so as, from respect and pity for Jacob Newell, it was scarce ever mentioned, except privately.