"What are you going to do about it, Mr. Brandon?" asked his wife.
"I think I had better go up to Philadelphia to-morrow."
"You would be going on a wild-goose chase."
"It isn't worth while. If the boy doesn't want to come home, he may take care of himself if he likes it so well. I shan't run round after him."
"He says he did not do what you punished him for," said Mrs. Brandon, rather deprecatingly, for she was somewhat in awe of her husband.
"Of course he would say that. I have heard that before."
"I know you have always been foolishly indulgent to him."
"At any rate that cannot be said of you," said his wife, with some spirit.
"No," he answered, rather surprised at such an unusual manifestation from his usually acquiescent wife; "you are right there, and you might add that I don't mean to be, if he should return."
"I think he would have come home but for that advertisement. You see what he says about it in his letter."
"If I were to write it again, I should write it in the same manner, though perhaps I might not offer so large a sum."
Mrs. Brandon sighed, and ceased speaking. She knew her husband well enough to see that there was little chance of changing his determination, or softening his anger towards Ben.
The next day, when Mr. Brandon returned home to dinner from his coal-wharf, he found Mary seated at the head of the table.
"She went to Philadelphia by the middle train," was the answer.
"I advised her not to go; but she thought she might meet Ben, and I could not dissuade her."
"Well, she will be better satisfied after she has been up--and failed to find him."
"Do you think he will ever come back, father?"
"Yes; he will turn up again some day, like a bad penny. He will find that earning his own living is not quite so agreeable as being taken care of at home."
"So much the worse for him," said Mr. Brandon.
Mr. Brandon spoke after his way of speaking, for he was not an affectionate man, nor given to the softer emotions. He had never given Ben any reason to think he loved him, at least since he was a baby, but appearances are sometimes deceptive, and he thought more of his son's absence than any one would have supposed. He thought, too, of that sentence in Ben's letter, in which he spoke of being punished for what he did not do, and he admitted to himself, though he would not have done so to his wife, that perhaps he had been unjust to the boy after all. Every day when he turned from his office to go home, it was with the unacknowledged hope that he might find the prodigal returned. But in this hope they were all doomed to be disappointed. Year after year passed away, and still no tidings from Ben beyond that single letter which we have mentioned.