It is a dream that has become a part of her very existence.

Why, even if young Joel had lived he would now be over sixty years of age, but she never thinks of him that way.

The deacon, they say, is eighty-five, though you'd never believe it to see his brawny muscles and healthy complexion." "You see," continued Thad, anxious that his chum should know everything connected with the subject, now he was upon it, "the old man often takes himself to task because he didn't understand boys as he might have done, when younger.

He believes he could have spared his wife her great sorrow if he had only been more judicious, and won the boy's confidence as well as his affection." "And that accounts for the deep interest he has felt in all boys ever since," Hugh was saying reflectively; "especially those who seem to have a streak of badness in them." "I suppose," Thad remarked, "it is his way of doing penance for what he considers a fault of his earlier years.

Sometimes I think I'd just like to be able to follow up that chap when he ran away from home, and learn what really did become of him." "He may have met with a sad fate out West, Thad; plenty of fellows have gone out and been swallowed up in the whirlpool." "If, on the other end, he didn't, and lived for many years," continued the other, "he must have been pretty tough not to write to his poor old mother at least once in a while.