John McIntyre's heart swelled. Well he understood the feeling that prompted Peter's act, for there was in his own homesick soul a longing to do the same, to plunge through the sea of loss and disappointment and go back to his denied Master. For this man's long night of storm and stress and fruitless toil was almost over, too. All unknown to himself, he had been slowly nearing the shore. The companionship and artless devotion of the boy--his enemy's child, but his now by all the rights of love--the kindness of the village folk in spite of rebuffs, the young doctor's care, and, above all, the tender message of the Book he had been constrained to read, had combined to guide him to the harbor. Yes, he was nearing the shore, and though he had not yet been able to discern Him through the night mists, there stood One waiting for him just behind the dawn. Long into the night he sat, filled with a feeling of expectancy. He was half-consciously waiting for something, he knew not what. Supposing that same One had been watching for him to return, all this weary time of sorrow and rebellion? The thought made his breath come quicker. Could it be possible? Could it be that the same Man who stood that morning on the shore of Galilee was waiting for even him--waiting with no rebuke for the curses and the denial, but only with outstretched, crucified hands, and the tender question He had put to that other faithless disciple, "Lovest thou me?" A tear slipped down John McIntyre's hollow cheek, the first tear he had shed since he and Mary had laid their last baby in its little grave. It fell upon his toil-hardened hand unnoticed, for a resolution was forming in his heart. He arose, stumbled hurriedly indoors, and lit his lamp. He must look once more into that Book. He must find out at once if this wonderful thing could be true, if life and happiness might still be his. With trembling hands he took up the Bible, as though it held for him a sentence of life or death, and turned over the leaves in a groping way. His movements were like those of a man in darkness, fumbling for a door that he hopes will lead him out into light and freedom. He stopped and gazed at the open page with a great wonder in his eyes. Perhaps he had been searching haphazard, or perhaps, under Divine guidance, his fingers, so long familiar with those pages, had gone unerringly to that marvelous story of the Fatherhood of God. For this was the message: "_And while he was yet a great way off his Father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him._"