"I guess they was healthy enough," said Lin.

"I suppose you found Boston much changed? It's a beautiful city."

"Good enough town for them that likes it, I expect," Lin replied.

The bishop was forming a notion of what the matter must be, but he had no
notion whatever of what now revealed itself.

"Mr. Bishop," the cow-puncher said, "how was that about that fellow you
told about that's in the Bible somewheres?--he come home to his folks,
and they--well there was his father saw him comin'"--He stopped,
embarrassed.

Then the bishop remembered the wide-open eyes, and how he had noticed
them in the church at the agency intently watching him. And, just now,
what were best to say he did not know. He looked at the young man
gravely.

"Have yu' got a Bible?" pursued Lin. "For, excuse me, but I'd like yu' to
read that onced."

So the bishop read, and Lin listened. And all the while this good
clergyman was perplexed how to speak--or if indeed to speak at this time
at all--to the heart of the man beside him for whom the parable had gone
so sorely wrong. When the reading was done, Lin had not taken his eyes
from the bishop's face.

"How long has that there been wrote?" he asked.