“It is my portrait,” said Mr. Kilbright, his voice trembling as he spoke.  “It was painted by Tatlow Munson in the winter of seventeen eighty, in payment for my surveying a large tract of land north of the town, he having no money to otherwise compensate me.  He wrote his name in ink upon the back of the canvas.”

Old Mr. Scott took up the picture and turned it around.  And there we all saw plainly written upon the time-stained back, “Tatlow Munson, 1780.”

Old Mr. Scott laid the picture upon the table, took off his spectacles, and with wide-open eyes gazed first at Mr. Kilbright and then at us.

The sight of the picture had finished the conversion of my wife.  “Oh, Mr. Scott,” she cried, leaning so far forward in her chair that it seemed as if she were about to go down on her knees before the old man, “this gentleman is your grandfather!  Yes, he is, indeed!  Oh, don’t discard him, for it was you who were the cause of his being here.  Don’t you remember when you went to the spiritualist meeting, and asked to see the spirit of your grandfather?  That spirit came, but you didn’t know it.  The people who materialized him were surprised when they saw this young man, and they thought he couldn’t be your grandfather, and so they didn’t say anything about it; and they left him right in the middle of whatever they use, and he kept on materializing without their thinking of him until he became just what you see him now.  And if he now wore old-fashioned clothes with a queue, he would be the exact image of that portrait of him which you have, only a little bit older looking and fuller in the face.  But the spiritualists made him cut off his long hair, because they said that wouldn’t do in these days, and dressed him in those common clothes just like any other person.  And oh, dear Mr. Scott, you must see for yourself that he is truly your grandfather!”

Old Mr. Scott made no answer, but still sat with wide-open eyes gazing from one to the other of us.  As I looked at that aged, white-haired man and thought of his mother, who must have died ever so long ago, being the daughter of the young man who sat opposite to him, it was indeed difficult to believe that these things could be so.

“Mr. Scott,” exclaimed my wife, “will you not speak to him?  Will you not give him your hand?  Will you not acknowledge him as your grandfather, whose picture you have always had near you, and which, when a little boy, I expect your dear mother has often told you to look up to and try to be like?  And if you have grown old, and he has not, on account of differences in circumstances, why should that make any difference in your feelings, dear Mr. Scott?  Oh, why don’t you let him take you to his heart?  I don’t see how you can help it,” she said, with a sob, “and you his little daughter’s only child!”

Old Mr. Scott rose to his feet.  He pulled down the sleeves of his coat, and gave an adjusting shake to its collar and lapels.  Then he turned to my wife and said:  “Madam, let us two dance a Virginia reel while your husband and that other one take the poker and tongs and beat out the music on the shovel.  We might as well be durned fools one way as another, and all go to the lunatic asylum together.”