When the messenger had turned his freight over to the driver of the Fargo wagon, he gathered up the Christmas tree and the toys and trudged homeward, looking like Santa Claus, so completely hidden was he by the tree and the trinkets.  As he neared the Downs’ home, the door swung open, the lamplight shone out upon him, and he saw two women smiling from the open door.  It took but one glance at the messenger’s face to show them that something was wrong, and the smiles faded.  Mrs. Downs received the shock without a murmur, leaning on her friend and leaving the marks of her fingers on her friend’s arm.

The messenger put the toys down suddenly, silently; and feeling that the unhappy woman would be better alone, the neighbors departed, leaving her seated by the window, peering into the night, the lamp turned very low.

The little clock on the shelf above the stove ticked off the seconds, measured the minutes, and marked the melancholy 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.