his first offense, and the
judges were lenient on him.

He is taking his first meal out of prison; he has been received
back, kiss'd, encourag'd to start again; his lungs, his
nostrils expand with the big breaths of free air; with
shame, with wonderment, with a trembling joy, his heart too,
expanding.

The old mother busies herself about the table; she has ready for
him the dishes he us'd to like; the father sits with his
back to them, reading the newspaper, the newspaper shaking
and rustling much; the children hang wondering around the
prodigal--they have been caution'd: Do not ask where our Jim
has been; only say you are glad to see him.

The elder daughter is there, palefac'd, quiet; her young man
went back on her four years ago; his folks would not let him
marry a convict's sister. She sits by the window, sewing on
the children's clothes, the clothes not only patching up;
her hunger for children of her own invisibly patching up.

The brother looks up; he catches her eye, he fearful,
apologetic; she smiles back at him, not reproachfully
smiling, with loving pretence of hope smiling--it is too
much for him; he buries his face in the folds of the
mother's black gown.

7. The best room of the house, on the Sabbath only open'd; the
smell of horse-hair furniture and mahogany varnish; the
ornaments on the what-not in the corner; the wax fruit,
dusty, sunken, sagged in, consumptive-looking, under a glass
globe, the sealing-wax imitation of coral; the cigar boxes
with shells plastered over, the perforated card-board motto.

The kitchen; the housewife sprinkling the clothes for the fine
ironing to-morrow--it is the Third-day night, and the plain
things are ready iron'd, now in cupboards, in drawers stowed
away.

The wife waiting for the husband--he is at the tavern, jovial,
carousing; she, alone in the kitchen sprinkling clothes--the
little red wood clock with peaked top, with pendulum wagging
behind a pane of gayly painted glass, strikes twelve.

The sound of the husband's voice on the still night air--he is
singing: "We won't go home until morning!"--the wife
arising, toward the wood-shed hastily going, stealthily
entering, the voice all the time coming nearer, inebriate,
chantant.

The husband passing the door of the wood-shed; the club over his
head, now with his head in c