me 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._"

The Book dropped to the floor; John McIntyre sank to his knees beside
it, his gray head bowed to the ground. He uttered an inarticulate cry.
It was like the sound a babe utters when first it sees its mother's
face after a day's absence--a cry that contains both the anguish of
their separation and the joy of their reunion. He could form no
coherent prayer, but the supreme thought of his homing soul burst from
him: "My Father!" he sobbed, "my Father! I've been away! I've been
away!" How long he knelt thus he had no idea. But in that meeting
with his lost Master he lived through a supreme joy that far
outmeasured all the bitterness of the past. He was aroused by the
sound of footsteps near his door. Two figures were coming slowly up
the pathway. Half dazed, John McIntyre arose and went forward with the
lamp. As the light fell upon the two men he uttered an exclamation of
concern. Dr. Allen, pale and exhausted, and splashed with mud, was
standing there, supporting a staggering, half-drowned man.

"I found an old friend caught in the swa