They were back in the long ago--Simeon Holly and his wife--back
with a boy of their own who had made those same rafters ring with
shouts of laughter, and who, also, had played the violin--though
not like this; and the same thought had come to each: "What if,
after all, it were John playing all alone in the moonlight!"

It had not been the violin, in the end, that had driven John
Holly from home. It had been the possibilities in a piece of
crayon. All through childhood the boy had drawn his beloved
"pictures" on every inviting space that offered,--whether it were
the "best-room" wall-paper, or the fly leaf of the big plush
album,--and at eighteen he had announced his determination to be
an artist. For a year after that Simeon Holly fought with all the
strength of a stubborn will, banished chalk and crayon from the
house, and set the boy to homely tasks that left no time for
anything but food and sleep--then John ran away.

That was fifteen years ago, and they had not seen him since;
though two unanswered letters in Simeon Holly's desk testified
that perhaps this, at least, was not the boy's fault.

It was not of the grown-up John, the willful boy and runaway son,
however, that Simeon Holly and his wife were thinking, as they
stood just inside the barn door; it was of Baby John, the little
curly-headed fellow that had played at their knees, frolicked in
this very barn, and nestled in their arms when the day was done.

Mrs. Holly spoke first--and it was not as she had spoken on the
porch.