On the day Joe left home his mother put his room in order for him as usual, and placed on the table a little bouquet of red and white geraniums and verbenas. She could not believe that he would be gone over night, and she knew that when he came he would be tired, broken, repentant, and grateful for the least mark of tenderness.

She delayed supper beyond the hour, in the hope that he might come. Even after the others had forced themselves to eat, she set aside enough for Joe.

She went many times to the east window to look down the road for him, and sent Jennie to the top of the hill to see if she could discover in the distance a boy riding toward her on a gray horse.

But Jennie, whose eyes had been full of tears all day, came back at dusk to say that she had seen nothing. Then she went weeping to bed.

The next day came, and many days thereafter; but Joe’s room was still vacant, and Old Charlie’s stall was still empty.

Farmer Gaston’s grief was less touching than his wife’s perhaps, but it was really as deep as hers. The habitual sternness of his face was tempered with the lines of sorrow.

He had made no effort to find the horse. There was no doubt in his mind that Joe had taken him; but he did not care to bring the boy into deeper disgrace by making public search.

Mr. Gaston sometimes wondered if he had taken the right course with Joe. His theory had been that the more strictly a boy was held to his work and duty as a boy, the more earnestly would he follow both as a man.

But he began now to think that possibly he had been too strict with Joe. Had he not left too little room for independence of thought and action? Had he tried to smother those boyish instincts of freedom and fair play that go, no less than other qualities, to make up the man?

His grief was mingled thus with a degree of remorse; but he still believed that it would not be wise to go out in search of Joe, offering terms of forgiveness. The boy’s offence had been too great for that. His own salvation depended on his coming back voluntarily in repentance and humiliation, with a full confession of his fault.

The hot days of July went by, and the hotter days of August. The summer tasks went on as of old about the farm, but the old place had never before been so silent and lonely.

The lines on Mr. Gaston’s face grew deeper. He went about with shoulders bent, as if bearing some heavy burden.

Joe’s mother, pitifully silent and anxious-eyed, not venturing to question the wisdom or oppose the will of her husband, went every day to place fresh flowers in Joe’s room. Every night she sat and looked up the long road to the east till darkness came and swallowed it, hoping, waiting, and yearning for the sight of her returning boy.

Meantime there had been, after a long delay, a movement in the community to look a little more deeply into the matter of the disappearance of Joe and the horse. Squire Bidwell, who happened to be at once the local justice of the peace and a good friend of Joe Gaston, found it hard to believe that the boy who had been an apt and receptive pupil in his Sunday school had proved to be a common thief.

The squire, moreover, had been Farmer Gaston’s friend from boyhood, and he saw with great pain the havoc which Joe’s disappearance, and his father’s belief in his guilt, was making in the family. He resolved to do what he could to probe the matter to the bottom.

He called together three or four of his most prudent townsmen, and set them at work making inquiries and doing a sort of detective work. Presently it was found that a farmer in an adjoining town had, on the evening of the day after Joe’s disappearance, while driving a cow from pasture, seen a rough-looking man ride a gray horse out of a wood-lot, and had found the place where the man and the horse had apparently passed several hours, and eaten a meal or two.

This clew was followed up. Still farther on other traces of the real thief were found. He had now passed quite beyond any jurisdiction of Squire Bidwell, but the authorities were notified of what had been learned, and were on the alert.

Callipers was well known through previous misdeeds. The man who had been seen answered his description. For a long time he evaded pursuit; but at last, as we have seen, he was apprehended, the very day after he had turned Old Charlie over to Rosencamp on the canal.

Late one September afternoon, after a day of sunshine and blue skies, Joe’s father sat on the westerly porch of the farmhouse, looking away toward the lake, on which the shadows were now falling deeply, and thinking of what had occurred on its shores on a memorable day in June.

On the steps at his feet, her chin in her hands, thinking also of poor Joe, sat his daughter Jennie. Mrs. Gaston, busy with some household task, moved about in the rooms near by.

Suddenly through the lane around the corner of the house came Squire Bidwell. He declined Mrs. Gaston’s invitation to enter the house, and Mr. Gaston’s invitation to take a chair on the porch. Then with some embarrassment, as though he were treading on delicate ground, the squire said,—

“Neighbor, you remember that gray horse you used to have?”

“Yes,” replied Mr. Gaston, coldly. “I remember him.”

“Well, some of us were talking about that horse the other day, and—and we kind of thought we’d look him up. We haven’t found him yet—”

“No, I presume not.”

“But we found out who took him.”

“I suppose we know who took him,” said Mr. Gaston, uneasily.

“I don’t think you do, Gaston,” said the squire. “It wasn’t Joe.”

“What!” exclaimed the farmer.

Mrs. Gaston had approached, and called out eagerly, “Mr. Bidwell!”

“O Joe! Oh, goody!” screamed Jennie.

“No,” repeated the squire, “it wasn’t your boy. It was a common horse-thief,—a bow-legged, stumpy fellow by the nickname of Callipers.”

“Are you sure about this?” questioned Mr. Gaston. “What evidence have you got?”

“You won’t deceive us?” exclaimed Joe’s mother.

“No, Mrs. Gaston, I wouldn’t,” said the squire, who had now found his tongue,—“not for anything. What I’m telling you is truth, every word of it. Joe didn’t take that horse. He didn’t know any more about the taking of that horse than you did,—not a bit. But we’ve run down the man who did it, from one clew to another, and the deputy sheriff’s got him in a wagon out here in the road in front of the house now. Will you go out and see him? I guess maybe he can tell you something about Joe. He seems inclined to make a clean breast of it. I’d have brought him around here with me, but the sheriff’s got handcuffs on him, and it’s hard to get him out and in the wagon.”

The next minute all four were on their way to the front gate. Callipers sat there in the wagon, under the eye of the deputy sheriff, with stoical indifference on his face.

“Good evenin’, ladies!” he said briskly, as the party approached him. “Good evenin’, Mr. Gaston, sir. I’m sorry to ’ave put you to the trouble of comin’ out ’ere, sir, but circumstances over which, as I may say, I have no control has made it inconwenient for me to meet you in your ’ouse.”

“Never mind that,” answered Mr. Gaston, sharply. “I’ll talk to you here.”

“Thank you, sir! I’m glad to meet you an’ your hinteresting family, sir. I ’ad the pleasure o’ visitin’ your ’andsome place once before, sir. It was in lovely June, in the early mornin’, sir. I may say it was so early that I ’adn’t the ’eart to disturb your slumbers. But as the result o’ that ’ere visit, be’old me now!”

The man held up his hands to show the steel bands firmly clasped about his wrists, and joined by a few short links.

“Do you know anything about my son?” asked Mr. Gaston, abruptly.

“Yes, sir. I will proceed with my tale. You see I was jest about to enter the stable door that mornin’ w’en that young feller appeared a-comin’ down the path, and as ’e appeared I disappeared be’ind the corner o’ the barn. He went in w’ere the ’oss was, an’ talked some sort o’ rubbish to ’im about ’is goin’ away an’ all that, you know. I couldn’t quite make out the drift of it. But ’e bid good-by to the ’oss, an’ went out a-wipin’ of ’is eyes, an’ struck into the road ’ere, an’ walked away in that direction.”

The man was about to indicate the direction referred to; but finding his right hand securely clasped to the other, he abandoned the attempt, begging to be excused from pointing out the direction.

“Seein’ that the ’oss was up an’ awake,” he continued, “an’ probably wouldn’t sleep no more that mornin’ anyhow, I took ’im with me into the country.”

“But about Joe, the boy?” asked Mr. Gaston, eagerly. “Have you seen him since?”

“Well, yes, sir, I ’ave. But now, look ’ere; you expects me to criminate myself, do you?”

“It will probably go less hard with you,” said Squire Bidwell, “if you tell the whole story of your performances, and reveal what you know about this boy that you’ve put under such a grave suspicion.”

“All right, all right,” said the horse-thief. “You’ve got me, ’ard and tight, that’s sure, an’ I don’t see no way out o’ it, now. I can give Mr. Gaston information that will lead him to the boy and the ’oss, sir.”

Then the man told how he had seen Joe on the canal, driving the tow-horses.

“How do you know it was our son you saw?” inquired Mr. Gaston, sternly.

“Well, it was the same lad that went into the barn an’ came out of it again that lovely mornin’ in June. Besides, this ’ere gray ’oss was there, you know, and the ’oss knowed ’im, an’ ’e knowed the ’oss. W’y, w’en they see each other on the canal, they was that tickled they rubbed noses an’ cried,—both of ’em.”

“Papa,” exclaimed Jennie, “that was Joe! I know it was! It was Joe and Old Charlie!”

“To tell the truth,” said Callipers, “the lad didn’t look just to say swell. ’Is clothes, if I must remark on ’em, seemed to be summat the worse for wear. His jacket an’ trousers was jest about so-so. ’Is shoes ’ad give out in places too numerous to mention. An’ there was ’ardly enough left of the ’at ’e ’ad on to make it proper to speak of it.”

“Father,” exclaimed Mrs. Gaston, “we must get him at once. He is in want; he is suffering! He is honest, too. He has been foolish and headstrong, but he is honest, and we have wronged him in our thought every day for three months. Now he must come home!”

It had been many years since Mrs. Gaston had expressed herself in so positive a manner as this to her husband. But now it was not necessary. He was as impatient for Joe’s return as she.

“I shall go to-morrow morning,” he said firmly, “and find him and bring him home.”

For the last two or three minutes Squire Bidwell had been gazing intently at something that had attracted his notice off on the hillside in the distance.

“Well, I declare!” he exclaimed, finally, “that is curious. Look!”

He pointed to the place where the open country road wound up the long slope of Hickory Hill. The sun had so far descended that the valley was in shadow, but it was still flooding the hilltops with its yellow light; and in its glow the figure of a boy on a horse, almost a mile away, was distinctly outlined.

“Do you see them,” asked the squire,—“up there in the road? They’ve done it twice or three times already. Now they’re going to do it again; watch ’em!”

What “they” had done was this: The boy was apparently laboring under some indecision, as if wishing to remain on the top of the hill. The horse, however, was plainly bent upon rushing down the hill toward the house. After a plunge down the road, the rider would succeed in turning the animal’s head up again; but he would no sooner have got a fair start in that direction, than the horse, swinging suddenly around, would begin to gallop furiously down the road once more toward the Gaston farm.

Now, again, in sight of them all, the boy succeeded in stopping the horse, in turning his head, and forcing him to reascend the hill; and once more the horse whirled about and plunged down the road toward the house.

This time, however, he received no check. The boy, as if in weariness and despair, allowed the reins to droop. The animal sped on, and the next moment both were hidden behind the trees at the bend of the road.

Mr. Gaston, shading his eyes with his hand, still stood gazing intently at the place where horse and rider had disappeared.

Mrs. Gaston’s white face and eager eyes, fixed on the point where the road came out of the grove, showed that she divined the truth.

“It is Joe!” she said, with forced calmness. “He is coming home!”

Then Old Charlie, with his young master on his back, bounded into sight, and presently boy and horse were in the midst of the group.

The next moment Joe was kneeling in the road, with his father’s hand clasped in both his.

“Father!” he said, “will you please forgive me and let me come home?”

Before the father could reply, the arms of Joe’s mother were around him, and Jennie was laughing and crying and clinging to his neck.

Then the good old horse, pushing his nose in among the four faces that he loved, met with a welcome that was no less sincere.

“He made me come,” explained Joe, a minute later. “I got to the top of the hill, and my courage gave out, and I didn’t dare come down, and I thought I would ride back on the road a piece farther, and then turn the horse loose and let him come home, while I went on afoot; but Old Charlie would come, whether or no, and—”

Joe’s voice gave out. Every one cried a little. Even Squire Bidwell and the deputy sheriff and Callipers had tears in their eyes. Mr. Gaston’s face, even with the tear-marks on it, was radiant.

Soon the squire and the deputy sheriff, with their prisoner, Callipers, drove off toward the county seat. Then the whole Gaston family went with Old Charlie to the stable, and gave him his supper and his bed before seeking their own.

Joe’s father and mother and sister were happy people that night.

THE END.