“Aunt Stanshy!  Aunt Stanshy, come quick, do!  There goes Tony’s father!”

Aunt Stanshy was down cellar fishing for pork in a capacious barrel.  She dropped the piece for which she had successfully angled, and rushed to the stairs as if a whirlwind was after her.  Breathless, she arrived at Charlie’s window.

“There, aunty, that is he!”

“What, Mr. Walton?”

“No, Mr. Walton is coming down the lane; but don’t you see that other man going up the lane?”

“O, yes, I see now.”

“Well, that is him.”

“But what are those two men doing?  If they aint shaking hands! and now they’ve got their arms round one another, and there they go walking off together!  It is the queerest proceeding!  Why, they act as if they had known one another a long time!”

Aunt Stanshy had too much of the woman in her to let the matter drop there.

She said to herself, “If any one knows about this thing, it is Miss Persnips.  I’ll clap on my bonnet and go up there.”

Miss Persnips generally had a bag full of news, and it was the only thing in the store for which she did not make a charge.  Its mouth was hospitably open to all comers, and the distribution of its contents had an effect on her custom like the giving out of a chromo as a present.  This morning, though, while the assortment in the bag was quite full and varied, it had nothing on the above subject.  Aunt Stanshy went home disappointed.  If she could have gone to Mr. Walton’s she would have witnessed something of interest.

Mr. Walton was leading the stranger into his house, when he said, “Stop a moment in the parlor and I will go into the sitting-room and prepare her.”

“All right.”

“Mother,” said Mr. Walton, stepping into the sitting-room, “would you like to see an old friend this morning?  You feel comfortable?”

“O yes; bring him in.”

“Shall I tell you who it is?”

“No, let me have the surprise.”

Her son led the stranger in.

“Why, Fred!” exclaimed Mrs. Walton.

The man dropped on his knees, and put his head in her lap.  And this was all that the mother did—­she stroked his head with her hands, saying:  “Why, Fred!  Fred! my poor boy!”

That was the way the long-absent son came home.

Fred Walton had been a wayward young man, finally going to Italy in a sailing-vessel, engaging to do any work for the sake of his passage.

In Italy, he took the name of Blanco, purposing to build up a new character on the basis of a new name.  The new character he needed, but his old name would have served him.  He there married a young Italian lady who had met his older brother in his travels and was an object of deep interest to him, but he had relinquished her to the younger brother.  Their married home was a pretty one, and a view of it Fred sent to his family in America.  It was a picture