"He came on foot, Charity, and no word arrived ahead of him. We are not such important people now, you know. I was upstairs in Uncle John's room, and Mr. Welland with me. It was late, Mr. Hibbs gone to bed, and we had almost persuaded Kate to go and rest too, but Mr. Welland had told me he half expected Uncle John to go out that night, so we sat up with him. There had been another stroke, as you know, a light one, but he was failing rapidly and most of the time seemed hardly to know us. Kate went downstairs for something, a pitcher of water I think, and I heard the front door, and she cried out something, presently weeping and laughing and calling up gibberish to us. I knew it was Ben, but I--you know, Snotnose, you really should have sent a messenger to warn us you was an inch taller and fifteen pounds heavier, in fact you'll be obliged to work now to some purpose, or at thirty you'll have a gut, I swear it. Mind it, Charity--he was ever too fond of cracklin's." _Quiet, Ru Cory! This is how it was, and you can't tell it_: Ben Cory appeared in the candlelight, and Ru Cory stood like a cold image and could not move, and Amadeus Welland came to him--to Reuben because he was the one in need--and then Ben came to him also--_but you can't tell it, seeing that for all your and-so-forth intellect you cannot bring love into the compass of a few well-chosen words, so be quiet and live a while_. "Well, Charity, Uncle John knew him at once, even before he knelt by the bed and said, 'I've come back.' His right hand came up and touched the scar, and he said very plainly--we all heard it: Kate, and Mr. Hibbs who'd come in rubbing his eyes and doubting, it may be, that anything so good as Ben's return could actually happen at the borders of philosophy--Uncle John said very plainly: 'Thou art my son.'" "And he died then?" "No, love, somehow nature seldom accommodates our itch for the appropriate, I don't know why. That was later in the night. Ben was exhausted, and I made him go to bed and save the story of his life for the following morning. Uncle John didn't die then, but seemed to have fallen into a heavy sleep. We stayed with him of course. I was watching his hand, Charity"--_and Amadeus' arm over my shoulder, and his voice speaking to me now and then_--"and at some time toward morning there was a kind of disturbance in his sleep, his hand closing as if it would hold fast to certain things for a while yet. Then it opened and gave it all away."