"Where we must all follow him, sooner or later,--in the grave!" "But he had brothers,--I've heard him say," the stranger continued,--with an anxiety in his tone that he could by no means conceal; "I believe he had--let me see--three brothers and two sisters. Where are _they_?" "All gone!" cried Jacob Newell, rising and pacing the room. Then suddenly facing his singular guest, he continued, speaking rapidly and bitterly, "You have three children,--I had six! Yours are alive and hearty; but so were mine; and when I was a young man, like you, I foolishly thought that I should raise them all, have them clustering around me in my old age, die before any of them, and so know no bereavements! To-day I stand here a solitary old man, sinking rapidly into the grave, and without a relation of any kind, that I know of, on the face of the earth! Think that such a fate may yet be yours! But the bitterness of life you will not fully know, unless one of your boys--as one of mine did--turns out profligate and drunken, leaves your fireside to associate with the dissolute, and finally deserts his home and all, forever!" "If that son of yours be yet alive, and were ever to return,--suddenly and without warning, as I have broken in upon you to-night,--if he should come to you and say, 'Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son!' what should you say to him?" "I should say, 'For fifteen years you have deserted me without giving mark or token that you were in the body; now you have come to see me die, and you may stay to bury me!' I should say that, I think, though I swore to Ruth but now that I would curse him, if ever he returned,--curse him and drive him from my door!" "But if he came back penitent indeed for past follies and offences, and only anxious to do well in the future,--if your son should come in that way, convincing you with tears of his sincerity, you surely would be more gentle to him than that! You would put away wrath, would you not? I ask you," the stranger continued, with emotion, "because I find myself in the position we suppose your son to be placed in. I am going home after an absence of years, during all which time I have held no communication with my family. I have sojourned in foreign lands, and now I come to make my father and my mother happy, if it be not too late for that! I come half hoping and half fearing; tell me what I am to expect? Place yourself in my father's position and read me my fate!" While he spoke, his wife, sitting silent by the fire, bent low over the child she held, and a few quiet tears fell upon the little one's frock. Ruth Newell, moving back and forth, in the preparation of the stranger's supper, wore an unquiet and troubled aspect, while the old farmer himself was agitated in a manner painful to see. It was some seconds before he broke the silence. When he spoke, his voice was thick and husky.