e house, with outstretched hand and a cool
"How are you, mother?"

And Mrs. Walraven knew her son. He had left her a fiery, handsome,
bright-faced lad, and this man before her was gray and black-bearded and
weather-beaten and brown, but she knew him. She had risen with a shrill
cry of joy, and held open her arms.

"I've come back, you see, mother," Mr. Carl said, easily, "like the
proverbial bad shilling. I've grown tired knocking about this big world,
and now, at nine-and-thirty, with an empty purse, a light heart, a
spotless conscience, and a sound digestion, I'm going to settle down and
walk in the way I should go. You are glad to have your ne'er-do-well
back again, I hope, mother?"

Glad! A widowed mother, lonely and old, glad to have an only son back!
Mrs. Walraven had tightened those withered arms about him closer and
closer, with only that one shrill cry:

"Oh, Carl--my son! my son!"

"All right, mother! And now, if there's anything in this house to eat,
I'll eat it, because I've been fasting since yesterday, and haven't a
stiver between me and eternity. By George! this isn't such a bad harbor
for a shipwrecked mariner to cast anchor in. I've been over the world,
mother, from Dan to--What's-her-name! I've been rich and I've been poor;
I've been loved and I've been hated; I've had my fling at everything
good and bad under the shining sun, and I come home from it all,
subscribing to the doctrine: 'There's nothing new and nothing true.' And
it don't signify; it's empty as egg-shells, the whole of it."

That was the story of the prodigal son. Mrs. Walraven asked no
questions. She was a wise old woman; she took her son and was thankful.
It had happened late in October, this sudden arrival, and now, late in
November, the fatted calf was killed, and Mrs. Walraven's dear five
hundred friends bidden to the feast.

And they came. They had all heard the story of the widow's heir, so long
lost, and now, dark and mysterious as Count Lara, returned to lord it in
his ancestral halls. He was a very hero of romance--a wealthy hero,
too--and all the pretty man-traps on the avenue, baited with lace and
roses, silk and jewels, were coming to-night to angle for this dazzling
prize.

The long-silent drawing-rooms, shrouded for twenty years in holland and
darkness, were one blaze of light at last. Flowers bloomed everywhere;
musicians, up in a gilded gallery, discoursed heavenly music; there was
a conservatory where alabaster