“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 didn’t, and lived for many years,” continued the other, “he must have been pretty tough not to write to his poor old mother at least once in a while.  I could never forgive Joel for that.  But they say he had an ugly nature, and was very stubborn.  Well, I’m glad the deacon has taken an interest in the reformation of Nick Lang, even if I have my doubts about his meeting with any sort of success.”

“Well, you may be a whole lot surprised one of these fine days, my boy,” Hugh smilingly told him.

“The age of miracles has passed, Hugh,” remarked Thad skeptically.

“Not the miracles that are brought about by a complete change of heart on the part of someone the world looks down on as a scamp,” Hugh persisted.  “But you’re one of those who want to be shown; I reckon, Thad, your folks must have come from Missouri, didn’t they?”

“Wrong again, Hugh, because none of them ever saw the Mississippi, though my grandfather fought through the Civil War, and was with Grant when Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House.  But I admit I am a little stubborn, and prejudiced.  It runs in the blood, I suppose.  The Stevens were always sort of pig-headed.”

“I’ve also heard considerable about the deacon as a weather seer, Thad; how about that?  Does he manage to hit it off occasionally, so as to equal our forecaster at Washington, whose predictions come true every now and then?”