lancholy hours. The storm ceased,
the stars came out and showed the quiet town asleep beneath its robe of
white. The clock was now striking four, and she had scarcely stirred.
She was thinking of the watchers of Bethlehem, when suddenly a great
light shone on the eastern horizon. At last the freight was coming. She
had scarcely noticed the messenger's suggestion that Charley might come
in on three. Now she waited, with just the faintest ray of hope; and
after a long while the deep voice of the locomotive came to her, the
long black train crept past and stopped. Now her heart beat wildly.
Somebody was coming up the road. A moment later she recognized her
erring husband, dressed exactly as he had been when he left home, his
short coat buttoned close up under his chin. When she saw him
approaching slowly but steadily, she knew he was sober and doubtless
cold. She was about to fling the door open to admit him when he stopped
and stood still. She watched him. He seemed to be wringing his hands. An
awful thought chilled her,--the thought that the cold and exposure had
unbalanced his mind. Suddenly he knelt in the snow and turned his sad
face up to the quiet sky. He was praying, and with a sudden impulse she
fell upon her knees and they prayed together with only the window-glass
between them.

When the prodigal got to his feet, the door stood open and his wife was
waiting to receive him. At sight of her, dressed as she had been when he
left her, a sudden flame of guilt and shame burned through him; but it
served only to clear his brain and strengthen his will-power, which all
his life had been so weak, and lately made weaker for want of exercise.
He walked almost hurriedly to the chair she set for him near the stove,
and sank into it with the weary air of one who has been long in bed. She
felt of his hands and they were not cold. She touched his face and found
it warm. She pushed the dark hair from his pale forehead and kissed it.
She knelt and prayed again, her head upon his knee. He bowed above her
while she prayed, and stroked her hair. She felt his tears falling upon
her head. She stood up, and when he lifted his face to hers, looked
into his wide weeping eyes,--aye, into his very soul. She liked to see
the tears and the look of agony on his face, for she knew by these signs
how he suffered, and she knew why.

When he had grown calm she brought a cup of coffee to him. He drank it,
and then she led him to the little dining