Some few minutes elapsed, and suddenly the glowing light of the sun was darkened, as by an intervening shadow.

The mother raised her head, and in another instant her son was at her feet.
"Mother, can you forgive, receive me?
Bid me not go forth--I cannot, may not leave you." "Go forth, my son, my son--oh, never, never!" she cried, and clasping him to her bosom, the quick glad tears fell fast upon his brow.

She released him to gaze again and again upon his face, and fold him closer to her heart, to read in those sunken features, that faded form, the tale that he had come back to her heart and to her home, never, never more to leave her.
In that one moment years of error were forgotten.

The mother only felt she hold her son to her heart, a suffering, yet an altered and a better man; and he, that he knelt once more beside his mother, forgiven and beloved..