When the modern young prodigal came to himself, when he found himself no longer able to endure the husks of the swine like his ancient exemplar, when he rose and returned to his father because of that distaste, he found no father watching and waiting for him at the end of the road!  Upon that change the action of this story hangs.  It was a pity, too, because the elder brother was there and in a mood not unlike that of his famous prototype.

Indeed, there was added to that elder brother’s natural resentment at the younger’s course the blinding power of a great sorrow, for the father of the two sons was dead.  He had died of a broken heart.  Possessed of no omniscience of mind or vision, he had been unable to foresee the long delayed turning point in the career of his younger son and death came too swiftly to enable them to meet again.  So long as he had strength, that father had stood, as it were, at the top of the hill looking down the road watching and hoping.

And but the day before the tardy prodigal’s return he had been laid away with his own fathers in the God’s acre around the village church in the Pennsylvania hills.  Therefore there was no fatted calf ready for the disillusioned youth whose waywardness had killed his father.  It will be remembered that the original elder brother objected seriously to fatted calves on such occasions.  Indeed, the funeral baked meats would coldly furnish forth a welcoming meal if any such were called for.

For all his waywardness, for all his self-will, the younger son had loved his father well, and it was a terrible shock to him (having come to his senses) to find that he had returned too late.  And for all his hardness and narrowness the eldest son also had loved his father well—­strong tribute to the quality of the dead parent—­and when he found himself bereft he naturally visited wrath upon the head of him who he believed rightly was the cause of the untimely death of the old man.

As he sat in the study, if such it might be called, of the departed, before the old-fashioned desk with its household and farm and business accounts, which in their order and method and long use were eloquent of his provident and farseeing father, his heart was hot within his breast.  Grief and resentment alike gnawed at his vitals.  They had received vivid reports, even in the little town in which they dwelt, of the wild doings of the wanderer, but they had enjoyed no direct communication with him.  After a while even rumour ceased to busy itself with the doings of the youth.  He had dropped out of their lives utterly after he passed over the hills and far away.

The father had failed slowly for a time, only to break suddenly and swiftly in the end.  And the hurried frantic search for the missing had brought no results.  Ironically the god of chance had led the young man’s repentant footsteps to the door too late.

“Where’s father?” cried John Carstairs to the startled woman who stared at him as if she had seen a ghost as, at his knock, she opened the door which he had found locked, not against him, but the hour was late and it was the usual nightly precaution: