“It’ll be your turn next!” he said savagely, throwing the whip toward Joe, and leaping to the deck of his boat.
The tow-line was pulled taut, and the boat moved on again. The poor beast, still quivering with excitement and pain, and allowing himself now to be led quietly along, showed by the occasional touch of his nose to the boy’s breast or shoulder that he wanted his sympathy and friendship.
So they trudged on together, boy and horse, each helping and comforting the other,—on in distress and despair, through cold and rain and mud, into the darkness, the dreariness, the frightfulness of another night!
How they got through that evening until ten o’clock, Joe could never quite recollect. His memory recalled only a confusion of lights and noises, of splashing mud and roaring water, of tangled tow-lines and interfering boats.
It was only when the horses had been put up for the night, and he was once more lying on the wet cabin-floor, listening to the beating of the rain on the deck above his head, that he was able to think clearly. How everything that he had done, and all his woes and troubles, rushed before him!
With his prejudice and passion all swept away, he went over in his mind the events of the last three months. His follies and sins became as plain to him as if they had been committed by another. Slowly but surely, as he pondered, there came into his mind the irresistible conviction that he must go home.
The old and beautiful story of the Prodigal Son came up from the depths of memory and glowed before him. He would go back, as did the child of the parable; but he would go in such repentance and humility as the Prodigal Son had never dreamed of.
He could not wait. He resolved to start at once,—now, in the night, in the storm, if he could but escape his keepers.
But there was Charlie,—poor Old Charlie!—who deserved, far more than did he himself, to escape from the sufferings of the present. How could he leave the old horse?