tive.

"They never looked on his face again, either living or dead," he
said. "Worse than that, they never even heard from him. It was as
if Joel had dropped out of sight that night when he left a line to
his mother saying he was going west to where they raised men, not
sissies. And so the years rolled around, and, they say, the old lady
even now sits looking into the sunset skies, dreaming that her Joel,
just as she remembered him, had sent word he was coming back to visit
them in their old age, and to ask forgiveness for his wrong-doing."

Hugh was greatly moved by the sad tale, which, however, he knew could
be easily matched in every town of any size in the country; for it is
of common occurrence, with a multitude of sore hearts turning toward
that Great West.

"That must have been how long ago, Thad?" he asked presently.

"Let me see, I should think all of forty years; perhaps forty-five
would be closer to the mark, Hugh."

"How sad," mused the other lad, with a shake of his head; "and to
think of that poor old lady, an invalid, you said, and confined to a
wheelchair, watching the sinking sun faithfully each evening as it
sets, still yearning for her boy to come back. It is a dream that
has become a part of her very existence. Why, even if young Joel had
lived he would now be over sixty years of age, but she never thinks
of him that way. The deacon, they say, is eighty-five, though you'd
never believe it to see his brawny muscles and healthy complexion."

"You see," continued Thad, anxious that his chum should know
everything connected with the subject, now he was upon it, "the old
man often takes himself to task because he didn't understand boys as
he might have done, when younger. He believes he could have spared
his wife her great sorrow if he had only been more judicious, and won
the boy's confidence as well as his affection."

"And that accounts for the deep interest he has felt in all boys ever
since," Hugh was saying reflectively; "especially those who seem to
have a streak of badness in them."

"I suppose," Thad remarked, "it is his way of doing penance for what
he considers a fault of his earlier years. Sometimes I think I'd
just like to be able to follow up that chap when he ran away from
home, and learn what really did become of him."

"He may have met with a sad fate out West, Thad; plenty of fellows
have gone out and been swallowed up in the whirlpool."

"If, on the other end, he did