Sally was at her northern home by this time, with a liberal pension which Mr. Newcome gave her, and which his son and his son’s son after him, through all their difficulties and distresses, always found means to pay. What the boy threatened in his delirium he had thought of, no doubt, more than once in his solitary and unhappy holidays. A year after he actually ran away, not from school, but from home; and appeared one morning, gaunt and hungry, at Sarah’s cottage two hundred miles away from Clapham, who housed the poor prodigal, and killed her calf for him—washed him, with many tears and kisses, and put him to bed and to sleep; from which slumber he was aroused by the appearance of his father, whose sure instinct, backed by Mrs. Newcome’s own quick intelligence, had made him at once aware whither the young runaway had fled. The poor father came horsewhip in hand—he knew of no other law or means to maintain his authority; many and many a time had his own father, the old weaver, whose memory he loved and honoured, strapped and beaten him. Seeing this instrument in the parent’s hand, as Mr. Newcome thrust out the weeping trembling Sarah and closed the door upon her, Tommy, scared out of a sweet sleep and a delightful dream of cricket, knew his fate; and, getting up out of bed, received his punishment without a word. Very likely the father suffered more than the child; for when the punishment was over, the little man, yet trembling and quivering with the pain, held out his little bleeding hand and said, “I can—I can take it from you, sir;” saying which his face flushed, and his eyes filled, for the first time; whereupon the father burst into a passion of tears, and embraced the boy and kissed him, besought and prayed him to be rebellious no more—flung the whip away from him and swore, come what would, he would never strike him again. The quarrel was the means of a great and happy reconciliation. The three dined together in Sarah’s cottage. Perhaps the father would have liked to walk that evening in the lanes and fields where he had wandered as a young fellow: where he had first courted and first kissed the young girl he loved—poor child—who had waited for him so faithfully and fondly, who had passed so many a day of patient want and meek expectance, to be repaid by such a scant holiday and brief fruition. Mrs. Newcome never made the slightest allusion to Tom’s absence after his return, but was quite gentle and affectionate with him, and that night read the parable of the Prodigal in a very low and quiet voice.