nt silence hung over
the place--it was just as it had been when, as a child, he had first
been taken to church.

And now, as then, his glance sought first of all the farthest
background of the place. What he saw was like and yet unlike what he
had seen there. Then, it had been the figure of a young man, holding
out his arms over a group of children; now, it was the figure of an
old woman, worn with sickness--but with the same great gentleness in
her face.

The woman's eyes lit up, as though she had seen a miracle; her glance
grew keen, as if wishing to be sure, and softened again, in the
certainty that the miracle had come.

The trembling head was lifted, the frail body rose up like a bent bow,
her mouth opened, and her lips began to move, but no sound came--she
could but reach out one thin, trembling hand to the figure by the
door.

He moved, and walked over to the bed. And the old woman and the weary
man took each other's hands and pressed them, looked into each other's
eyes and trembled with emotion, unable to speak a word.

Tears rose to the old woman's eyes, a gleam as of sunset over autumn
woods lit her wrinkled face; the thin lips quivered between smiling
and weeping.

"So you came after all," she said at last in a trembling voice. "I
knew you would come--some time. And good that you came just now...."

She sank back wearily on the pillow, and the man sat down on a chair
at her side, still holding her hands in his.

* * * * *

The old woman lay with her face turned towards her son, looking at him
with love in her eyes.

Then her look turned to one of questioning--there was something she
had been waiting years to ask.

"Tell me, my son...." Her voice was almost a whisper.

But he could not answer.

"Olof, look at me," she begged.

And the man beside the bed lifted his eyes, great dark eyes full of
weariness and stark fear--but bowed his head again and looked away.

The smile vanished from the old woman's face. She gazed long and
searchingly at her son's haggard chin, his sunken cheeks and loose
eyelids, the pale forehead, the furrowed temples--everything.

"Perhaps it has to be," she murmured, as if speaking to someone
else. "'_And wasted all his substance.... And he said, I will arise
and_....'"

Her voice trembled, and Olof, in a hasty glance, saw how her wrinkled
mouth quivered with emotion.

And suddenly the coldness that had almost paralysed him up to no