White as ashes grew the face of Uncle Joshua.  The truth had flashed upon him, and almost rendered him powerless.  Pale and motionless he sat, until William, freeing himself from Aunt Katy, came forward and said, “Joshua, I am William, your brother; don’t you know me?”

Then the floodgates of Uncle Joshua’s heart seemed unlocked, and the long, fervent embrace which followed between the rough old man and his newly-found brother made more than one of the lookers on turn away his face lest his companion should detect the moisture in his eyes, which seriously threatened to assume the form of tears.

When the first joy and surprise of this unexpected meeting was over, Mr. Joshua Middleton said, as if apologizing for his emotion, “I’m dumbly afeard, Bill, that I acted mighty baby-like, but hang me if I could help it.  Such a day as this I never expected to see, and yet I have lain awake o’ nights thinkin’ mebby you’d come back.  But such ideas didn’t last long, and I’d soon give you up as a goner.”

“That’s jest what I never did,” said Aunt Katy, who still stood near.

In the excitement of the moment she had forgotten that she had long thought of “Marster William” as dead; she continued, “A heap of prars I said for him, and it’s chiefly owin’ to them prars, I reckon, that he’s done fished up out of the sea.”

“I’ve never been in the sea yet, Aunt Katy,” said Mr. Middleton, desirous of removing from her mind the fancy that any special miracle had been wrought in his behalf.

“Whar in fury have you been, and what’s the reason you hain’t writ these dozen years?  Come, give us the history of your carryin’s on,” said Mr. Joshua Middleton.

“Not now,” answered his brother.  “Let us wait until evening, and then you shall hear my adventures; now let me pay my respects to your wife.”

While he was introducing himself to Mrs. Middleton, Katy went back to the kitchen, whither the news had preceded her, causing Bob in his joy to turn several somersaults.  In the last of these he was very unfortunate, for his heels, in their descent, chanced to hit and overturn a churn full of buttermilk!  When Aunt Katy entered she found Bob bemoaning the backache, which his mother had unsparingly given him!  Aunt Judy herself, having cleared away the buttermilk, by sweeping it out of doors, was waiting eagerly to know “if Marster William done axed arter her.”

“Why, no, Judy,” said Katy, somewhat elated because she had been first to recognize and welcome the stranger.  “Why, no, I can’t say he did, and ’tain’t nateral like that he should set so much store by you, as by me.  Ain’t I got twenty years the start on you; and didn’t I nuss him, and arter his mother died didn’t I larn him all his manners?”

Aunt Judy was on the point of crying, when who should walk in but “Marster William” himself.  “I am told,” said he, “that Judy is here, Judy, that I used to play with.”