d never
left him, to every infrequent footfall in the street. There came a
knock at the door. He opened it, and out of the darkness into which he
could not see came a voice altered in pitch, but with remembered
accents in it, saying:

"Father, mother has come home!"

Stepping back before that extraordinary salutation, Judge Whaley saw a
man come forward leading a woman by the hand. The Judge receded until
he could go no farther, and sank into his chair. The woman knelt at
his feet; older, and grown gray and in the robes of humility, yet in
countenance as she had been, only purified, as it seemed, by suffering
and repentance, he saw his wife of more than twenty years before.

Looking up into the face of the son he had watched so long for, the
old man saw a still more wonderful transformation. The elegant young
gentleman of a few months before was a living spectre, his bright eyes
standing out large and consumptive upon a transparent skin, and
glittering with fanaticism or excitement.

"Perry Whaley," said the woman firmly, but with sweetness, "it is
twenty-two years since I left this house with hate of me in your heart
and a degraded name; I was in thought and act a pure woman, though the
evidence against me was mountain-high. My sin was that of many
women--flirtation. Nothing more, before my God! I trifled with one of
your students, a reckless and hot-blooded man, and inspired him with a
tyrannous passion. He swore if I would not fly with him to destroy me.
One day, the most dreadful of my life, he heard your foot upon the
stairs ascending to my chamber, and threw himself into it before you
and avowed himself your injurer. Then rose in confirmation of him
every girlish folly; I saw myself in your mild eyes condemned, in this
community long suspected, and by my own family discarded for your
sake. Where could I go but to the author of my sorrows? He became my
husband and I am a widow."

Judge Whaley stretched out his hand in the direction of his eyes, not
upon the old wife at his feet, but toward his son, who had settled
into a chair and closed his eyes as if in tired rapture.

"Hear me but a moment more," said the kneeling woman. "I was the slave
of an ever-jealous maniac; but my heart was still at this fireside
with your bowed spirit, and this our son. My husband told me that the
way to recover the child was to claim it as his. His motive, I fear,
was different--to place me on record as confessedly false and prev