University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
THE PRODIGAL RETURNS.

AT last the knight was in the saddle. Much as
Morton grieved when he thought of Patty, he
rejoiced now in the wholeness of his moral purpose.
Vacillation was over. He was ready to fight, to
sacrifice, to die, for a good cause. It had been the
dream of his boyhood; it had been the longing of
his youth, marred and disfigured by irregularities as
his youth had been. In the early twilight of the
winter morning he rode bravely toward his first battle
field, and, as was his wont in moments of cheerfulness,
he sang. But not now the “Highland Mary,” or
“Ca' the yowe's to the knowes,” but a hymn of
Charles Wesley's he had heard Cook sing the night
before, some stanzas of which had strongly impressed
him and accorded exactly with his new mood, and
his anticipation of trouble and the loss of Patty,
perhaps, from his religious life:

Long before he had reached Hissawachee he had
ceased to sing. He was painfully endeavoring to
imagine how he would be received at home and at
Captain Lumsden's.

At home, the wan mother sat in the dull winter
twilight, trying to keep her heart from fainting entirely.
The story of Morton's losses at cards had
quickly reached the settlement—with the easy addition
that he had fled to escape paying his debt of dishonor,
and had carried off the horse and gun which
another had won from him in gambling. This last,
the mother steadily refused to believe. It could not
be that Morton would quench all the manly impulses
of his youth and follow in the steps of his prodigal
brother, Lewis. For Morton was such a boy as Lewis
had never been, and the thought of his deserting his
home and falling finally into bad practices, had brought
to Mrs. Goodwin an agony that was next door to
heart-break. Job Goodwin had abandoned all work
and taken to his congenial employment of sighing

and croaking in the chimney-corner, building innumerable
Castles of Doubt for the Giant Despair.

Mrs. Wheeler came in to comfort her friend.
“I am sure, Mrs. Goodwin,” she said, “Morton will
yet be saved; I have been enabled to pray for him
with faith.”

In spite of her sorrow, Mrs. Goodwin could not
help thinking that it was very inconsistent for an
Arminian to believe that God would convert a man
in answer to prayer, when Arminians professed to
believe that a man could be a Christian or not as he
pleased. Willing, however, to lay the blame of her
misfortune on anybody but Morton, she said, half
peevishly, that she wished the Methodists had never
come to the settlement. Morton had been in a hopeful
state of mind, and they had driven him to wickedness.
Otherwise he would doubtless have been a
Christian by this time.

And now Mrs. Wheeler, on her part, thought —
but did not say—that it was most absurd for Mrs.
Goodwin to complain of anything having driven
Morton away from salvation, since, according to her
Calvinistic doctrine, he must be saved anyhow if he
were elected. It is so easy to be inconsistent when
we try to reason about God's relation to his creatures;
and so easy to see absurdity in any creed but our
own!

The twilight deepened, and Mrs. Goodwin, unable
now to endure the darkness, lit her candle. Then
there was a knock at the door. Ever since Sunday
the mother, waiting between hope and despair, had

turned pale at every sound of footsteps without. Now
she called out, “Come in!” in a broken voice, and
Mr. Brady entered, having just dismissed his school.

“Troth, me dair madam, it's not meself that can
give comfort. I'm sure to say something not intoirely
proper to the occasion, whiniver I talk to anybody in
throuble—something that jars loike a varb that disagrees
with its nominative in number and parson, as I
may say. But I thought I ought to come and say
you, and till you as I don't belave Moirton would do
anything very bad, an' I'm shoore he'll be home afore
the wake's out. I've soiphered it out by the Rule of
Thray. As Moirton Goodwin wuz to his other throubles—comin'
out all roight—so is Moirton Goodwin to
his present difficulties. If the first term and the third
is the same, then the sicond and the fourth has got
to be idintical. Perhaps I'm talkin' too larned; but
you're an eddicated woman, Mrs. Goodwin, and you
can say that me dimonsthration's entoirely corrict.
Moirton 'll fetch the answer set down in the book
ivery toime, without any remainder or mistake. Thair's
no vulgar fractions about him.”

“Fractious, did you say?” spoke in Job Goodwin,
who had held his hand up to his best ear, to hear
what Brady was saying. “No, I don't 'low he was
fractious, fer the mos' part. But he's gone now, and
he'll git killed like Lew did, and we'll all hev the
fever, and then they'll be a war weth the Bridish, and
the Injuns 'll be on us, and it 'pears like as if they
wa'n't no eend of troubles a-comin'. Hey?”

At that very moment the latch was jerked up and

Henry came bursting into the room, gasping from excitement.

“What is it? Injuns?” asked Mr. Goodwin, getting
to his feet.

But Henry gasped again.

“Spake!” said Brady. “Out wid it!”

“Mort's—a-puttin'—Dolly—in the stable!” said the
breathless boy.

“Dolly's in the stable, did you say?” queried Job
Goodwin, sitting down again hopelessly. “Then somebody—Injuns,
robbers, or somebody—'s killed Mort,
and she's found her way back!”

While Mr. Goodwin was speaking, Mrs. Wheeler
slipped out of the open door, that she might not intrude
upon the meeting; but Brady—oral newspaper
that he was—waited, with the true journalistic spirit,
for an interview. Hardly had Job Goodwin finished
his doleful speech, when Morton himself crossed the
threshold and reached out his hand to his mother,
while she reached out both hands and — did what
mothers have done for returning prodigals since the
world was made. Her husband stood by bewildered,
trying to collect his wits enough to understand how
Morton could have been murdered by robbers or
Indians and yet stand there. Not until the mother
released him, and Morton turned and shook hands
with his father, did the father get rid of the illusion
that his son was certainly dead.

“Well, Moirton,” said Brady, coming out of the
shadow, “I'm roight glad to see ye back. I tould 'em
ye'd bay home to-noight, maybe. I soiphered it out

by the Single Rule of Thray that ye'd git back about
this toime. One day fer sinnin', one day fer throyin'
to run away from yersilf, one day for repintance, and
the nixt the prodigal son falls on his mother's neck
and confisses his sins.”

Morton was glad to find Brady present; he was a
safeguard against too much of a scene. And to avoid
speaking of subjects more unpleasant, he plunged at
once into an account of his adventure at Brewer's
Hole, and of his arrest for stealing his own horse.
Then he told how he had escaped by the good offices
of Mr. Donaldson. Mrs. Goodwin was secretly delighted
at this. It was a new bond between the young
man and the minister, and now at last she should see
Morton converted. The religious experience Morton
reserved. He wanted to break it to his mother alone,
and he wanted to be the first to speak of it to Patty.
And so it happened that Brady, having gotten, as he
supposed, a full account of Morton's adventures, and
being eager to tell so choice and fresh a story, found
himself unable to stay longer. But just as he reached
the door, it occurred to him that if he did not tell
Morton at once what had happened in his absence,
some one else would anticipate him. He had sole possession
of Morton's adventure anyhow; so he straightened
himself up against the door and said:

“An' did ye hear what happened to Koike, the
whoile ye was gone, Moirton?”

“Nothing bad, I hope,” said Morton.

“Ye may belave it was bad, or ye may take it to
be good, as ye plase. Ye know how Koike was bilin'

over to shoot his uncle, afore ye went away in the
fall. Will, on'y yisterday the Captin he jist met
Koike in the road, and gives him some hard words fer
sayin' what he did to him last Sunthay. An' fwat
does Koike do but bowldly begins another exhortation,
tellin' the Captin he was a sinner as desarved to go
to hill, an' that he'd git there if he didn't whale about
and take the other thrack. An' fwat does the Captin
do but up wid the flat of his hand and boxes Koike's
jaw. An' I thought Koike would 'a' sarved him as
Magruder did Jake Sniger. But not a bit of it! He
fired up rid, and thin got pale immajiately. Thin he
turned round t'other soide of his face, and, wid a
thremblin' voice, axed the Captin if he didn't want to
slap that chake too? An' the Captin swore at him
fer a hypocrite, and thin put out for home wid the
jerks; an' he's been a-lookin' loike a sintince that
couldn' be parsed iver sence.”

“I wonder Kike bore it. I don't think I could,”
said Morton, meditatively.

“Av coorse ye couldn't. Ye're not a convarted
Mithodist. But I must be goin'. I'm a-boardin' at
the Captin's now.”