Look to the other side of the picture, and think of what has been going on in the father's heart. No particulars are given of his feeling during the season of separation, but his heart is a chapter in the book, that life is ever laying open, and what is told of him at the crisis, indicates well his temper during the interval. He had but two boys, and his whole hope and love must have centred in them and their destiny. They may have been dearer to him from being all the memorial left to him of the mother long since taken from the world. The younger may have been the pet of his leisure hours, whilst the elder was busy with the cares of the farm; for there is likely to be a pet child in every family. But the plain facts are enough without laying any tax upon the imagination. He had the common heart of good men, and had shown his willingness to make sacrifices for his children. Many a time in lonely hours he must have thought of the wanderer, and wondered if the boy whom he never forgot, could forget him. The prosperity of his business, the plenty of his crops, the number of his flocks and herds, could not satisfy him; even the sight of the son now with him, but reminded him how broken was his family and how divided his heart. Touches of compassion would mingle with his lonely regrets, and remembering the common weakness of our humanity, he would consider the amount of temptation in wait for every novice, and have misgivings at allowing him to go out alone into the world. Many a time his wistful gaze would rest upon the road taken by the departing wanderer, and he would ask himself if the youth would ever return, and in what condition. One day as he looked, that lonely road had for him a startling apparition. Far in the distance appears a tired, tattered wayfarer, a mere vagrant to the common gaze; but one of the many who seem heir of misery, and for whom compassion itself has little reasonable hope. But no; the eye of affection is ever sharpsighted, and the father sees under that beggar's garb the step and air of his long-lost son; and one look tells to him the whole story of his fortunes. He is a poor and broken-down creature, and comes home penitent, to ask mercy of the love that he had so offended. All is told in those simple words of welcome "But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him."