Whaley because he insisted that he was not the Judge's son. Young
Perry was exhorting in the Methodist church, and studying and starving
himself to be a preacher. The Methodists were wild with social and
denominational triumph: the Episcopalians were outraged, and meditated
sending Perry to the lunatic asylum. Finally, to the great joy of
nervous people, the last sensation came--Perry Whaley had left
Chester to be a preacher.

Judge Whaley now grew old rapidly, and meek and careless of his
attire. In an old pair of slippers, glove-less and abstracted, he
crossed the court-house green, no longer the first gentleman in the
county in courteous accost and lofty tone. He read his Bible in the
seclusion of his own house, and fishermen on the river coming in after
midnight saw the lamp-light stream through the chinks of his shutters,
and said: "He has never been the same since Perry went away." But he
read in the religious papers of the genius and power of the absent
one, roving like a young hermit loosened, and with a tongue of flame
over the length and breadth of the country, producing extraordinary
excitement and adding thousands to his humble denomination.

On Christmas Day the Judge was sitting in his great room reading the
same mystic book, and listening, with a wistfulness that had never
left him, to every infrequent footfall in the street. There came a
knock at the door. He opened it, and out of the darkness into which he
could not see came a voice altered in pitch, but with remembered
accents in it, saying:

"Father, mother has come home!"

Stepping back before that extraordinary salutation, Judge Whaley saw a