They stopped at the Prospect House more for the sake of its association with their parents than for the real comfort there was there now. The ruling spirit, Dotty, had been stricken with paralysis, and was more helpless than Uncle Zach, who, a martyr to rheumatism, sat in his wheel chair all day, unable to walk more than a few steps at a time, with the help of two canes. He had received cards to their wedding, and had sent his regrets in a long letter in which he deplored the fact that he could not get some good out of his “swaller tail, which he wore to Craig’s weddin’ when he didn’t or’to wear it, and which was as good as new.” Mention, too, was made of Dot’s plum-colored satin, which was now too small for her, especially the sleeves. He was glad they remembered him. An _invite_ was good to stay home on, and he was their respectful and venerable friend to command. Zacheus Taylor, Esquire, and poor Dotty’s X mark, “for she can’t use her hands to write more than that.” Uncle Zach had grown childishly weak with his trouble and his years, and received Roy and Fanny with floods of tears, lamenting Dotty’s inability to serve them. “I never expected to see you both agin, and when you was here together I told Dot so,” he said; “but here you be, and I’m mighty glad. I’m havin’ hard sleddin’. Old age ain’t a pleasant thing, with rheumatiz’ and paralysis, and maybe soffnin’ of the brain, and the tarvern all run down,—and Dotty played out.” The best the house afforded was theirs, he said, and he insisted upon their taking the saloon, as he still called the parlor Mrs. Tracy had occupied. “You’ll be better off there by yourselves,” he said. “The boarders ain’t what they used to be. The Tremont has got the big bugs.” Poor Dotty couldn’t talk much or move, and Fanny spent hours with her, anticipating her wishes by her looks and greatly smoothing her path to the grave. Roy staid a good deal with Uncle Zach, who asked numberless questions about Mark and Jeff. “I wish they was here. I want to see ’em, and so does Dot, though she can’t say so. Strange how I miss her talk and blowin’ me when I deserved it. I’m like a ship without a captain, but my laigs trouble me the most. Feel like sticks when I try to walk, and Sam Baily don’t push me even, at all,—jolts awfully over the stones. Yes, I wish they was here. Mabby they’d come, if they knew how used up Dotty and I be. Jeff could lift her and wheel me. Write and tell ’em I want ’em.” Roy was not very enthusiastic on the subject, but he made no objection when Fanny wrote what Uncle Zach had said and added her own entreaties for her father to come. “I don’t suppose you will care to see mother often,” she said, “but you can see _me_. I shall have a home of my own in Boston and we are going to build a cottage near the old ruin,—Roy and I,—and shall spend a part of each summer here.” It was two weeks before an answer came, not in Mark’s handwriting, but in Tom’s.