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“Where’s father?” cried John Carstairs to the startled woman who stared
at him as if she had seen a ghost as, at his knock, she opened the door
which he had found locked, not against him, but the hour was late and it
was the usual nightly precaution:

“Your brother is in your father’s study, sir,” faltered the servant at
last.

“Umph! Will,” said the man, his face changing. “I’d rather see father
first.”

“I think you had better see Mr. William, sir.”

“What’s the matter, Janet?” asked young Carstairs anxiously. “Is father
ill?”

“Yes, sir! indeed I think you had bettor see Mr. William at once, Mr.
John.”

Strangely moved by the obvious agitation of the ancient servitor of the
house who had known him from childhood, John Carstairs hurried down the
long hall to the door of his father’s study. Always a scapegrace,
generally in difficulties, full of mischief, he had approached that door
many times in fear of well merited punishment which was sure to be meted
out to him. And he came to it with the old familiar apprehension that
night, if from a different cause. He never dreamed that his father was
anything but ill. He must see his brother. He stood in no little awe of
that brother, who was his exact antithesis in almost everything. They
had not got along particularly well. If his father had been inside the
door he would have hesitated with his hand on the knob. If his father
had not been ill he would not have attempted to face his brother. But
his anxiety, which was increased by a sudden foreboding, for Janet, the
maid, had looked at him so strangely, moved him to quick action. He
threw the door open instantly. What he saw did not reassure him. William
was clad in funeral black. He wore a long frock coat instead of the
usual knockabout suit he affected on the farm. His face was white and
haggard. There was an instant interchange of names.

“John!”

“William!”

And then–

“Is father ill?” burst out the younger.

“Janet said–“

“Dead!” interposed William harshly, all his indignation flaming into
speech and action as he confronted the cause of the disaster.

“Dead! Good God!”

“God had nothing to do with it.”

“You mean?”

“You did it.”

“I?”

“Yes. Your drunken revelry, your reckless extravagance, your dissipation
with women, your unfeeling silence, your–“

“Stop!” cried the younger. “I have come to my senses, I can’t bear it.”

“I’ll say it if it kills you. You did it, I repeat. He longed and prayed
and waited and you didn’t come. You didn’t write. We could hear nothing.
The best father on earth.”

The younger man sank down in a chair and covered his face with his
hands.

“When?” he gasped out finally.

“Three days ago.”

“And have you–“

“He is buried beside mother in the churchyard yonder. Now that you are
here I thank God that he didn’t live to see what you have become.”

The respectable elder brother’s glance took in the disreputable younger,
his once handsome face marred–one doesn’t foregather with swine in the
sty without acquiring marks of the association–his clothing in rags.
Thus errant youth, that was youth no longer, came back from that far
country. Under such circumstances one generally has to walk most of the
way. He had often heard the chimes at midnight, sleeping coldly in the
straw stack of the fields, and the dust of the road clung to his person.
Through his broken shoes his bare feet showed, and he trembled visibly
as the other confronted him, partly from hunger and weakness and
shattered nerves, and partly from shame and horror and for what reason
God only knew.

The tall, handsome man in the long black coat, who towered over him so
grimly stern, was two years older than he, yet to the casual observer
the balance of time was against the prodigal by at least a dozen years.
However, he was but faintly conscious of his older brother. One word and
one sentence rang in his ear. Indeed, they beat upon his consciousness
until he blanched and quivered beneath their onslaught.