tate home.

Oh, the bitterness of the misery of that Thanksgiving-Day to Jacob
Newell! He may live a hundred years and never know such another.

The next day Samson awoke from a wretched stupor to find himself weak,
nervous, and suffering from a blinding headache. In this condition his
father forced him to the barn, and there, with a heavy raw-hide, flogged
him without mercy. That night Samson Newell disappeared, and was
thenceforward seen no more in the village.

The same night one of the village stores was entered, the door of an
ancient safe wrenched open, and something over a hundred dollars in
specie taken therefrom. So that on Samson Newell's head rested the crime
of filial disobedience, and the suspicion, amounting, with nearly all,
to a certainty, that he had added burglary to his other wrong-doing.

His name was published in the papers throughout the county, together
with a personal description and the offer of a reward for his arrest and
return. But as he was never brought back nor heard of more, the matter
gradually died away and was forgotten by most in the village; the more
so as, from respect and pity for Jacob Newell, it was scarce ever
mentioned, except privately.

Eight years elapsed from the time of his flight and supposed crime, when
the fellow he had thrashed at the tavern was arrested, tried,
convicted, and sentenced to death for a murder committed in a midnight
tavern-brawl. In a confession that he made he exonerated Samson Newell
from any participation in or knowledge of the burglary for which his
reputation had so long suffered, stating in what manner he had himself
committed the deed. So the memory of the erring son of Jacob Newell was
relieved from the great shadow that had darkened it. Still he was never
mentioned by father or mother; and seven years more rolled wearily on,
till they sit, to-day, alone and childless, by the flickering November
fire.

Sore trouble had fallen on them since their youngest son had
disappeared. One by one, the elder children had passed away, each
winter's snow for five years covered a fresh grave, till the new
afflictions that were in store for them scarcely seemed to affect them
otherwise than by cutting yet deeper into the sunken cheeks the deep
lines of sorrow and regret.

Jacob Newell had been known for years as a "forehanded man" in the rural
neighborhood. His lands were extensive, and he had pursued a liberal
system of cultivation, putting into the so