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"You did your best to make provision for our needs, my son. We are blaming nobody. Don't allow yourself to feel unhappy. We are not complaining of anything but Fate."

"But you ought to blame me," cried Joseph. "It was I who brought all these calamities upon my nearest and dearest. But God knows I do repent in sackcloth and ashes."

"Oh, father, we can never be unhappy now! Our boy that was lost is found. He that we mourned as dead is with us, alive and well. There is no blood-guiltiness upon his head, and no shadow of murder or hatred in his heart. The Lord be praised for all His tender mercies to the children of men!"

"Yes, yes, the Lord be praised!" echoed the father, fervently. "Surely, after all the blessings that have been showered upon us this night, we can take all the balance on trust."

"We have the promise, father: ' Trust in the Lord and do good, and verily thou shalt be fed.' "

"I'd give the world, if I had it, for the simple, childlike faith of our father and mother," said John, as soon as the brothers were alone.

"And I'd give the world, if I had it, for a chance to live my life over, that I might have an opportunity to atone for the suffering I have caused you all."

"Dear Joe, you have suffered too."

He turned his face to the wall and relapsed into silence. And as he secretly invoked the presence of his beloved dead, he saw himself in an emigrant's camp far away in the Black Hills. Again the tethered Flossie lowed plaintively at the wagon-wheel, bemoaning the death of her calf; again the still, white-robed form of his Annie appeared before his mental vision. And the sorrowing husband fell asleep.