Kilbright then proceeded to tell me how happy he had been when Corbridge informed him that his dematerialization had been indefinitely postponed, and that I had consented to take him into my service.  “It is now plain to me,” he said, “that they have no power to do this thing and cannot obtain it from others.  This discardment of me proves that they have abandoned their hopes.”

It was evident that Corbridge had said nothing of the expected coming of the German scientist, and I would not be cruel enough to speak of it myself.  Besides, I intended to have said scientist arrested and put under bonds as soon as he set foot on our shores.

“I do not feel,” continued Kilbright, “that I am beginning a new life, but that I am taking up my old one at the point where I left it off.”

“You cannot do that,” I said.  “Things have changed very much, and you will have to adapt yourself to those changes.  In many ways you must begin again.”

“I know that,” he said, “and with respect to much that I see about me, I am but a child.  But as I am truly a man, I shall begin to do a man’s work, and what I know not of the things that are about me, that will I learn as quickly as may be.  It is my purpose, sir, to labor with you in any manner which you may deem fit, and in which I may be found serviceable until I have gained sufficient money to travel to Bixbury, and there endeavor to establish myself in some worthy employment.  I had at that place a small estate, but of that I shall take no heed.  Without doubt it has gone, rightly, to my heirs, and even if I could deprive them of it I would not.”

“Have you living heirs besides your grandson here?” I asked.

“That I know not,” he said; “but if there be such I greatly long to see them.”

“And how about old Mr. Scott?” said I.  “When shall we go to him and tell him who you are?”

“I greatly desire that that may be done soon,” answered Kilbright, “but first I wish to establish myself in some means of livelihood, so that he may not think that I come to him for maintenance.”

Of course it was not possible for me to turn this man away and tell him I had nothing for him to do, and therefore I must devise employment for him.  I found that he wrote a fair hand, a little stiff and labored, but legible and neat, and as I had a good deal of copying to do I decided to set him to work upon this.  I procured board and lodging for him in a house near by, and a very happy being was Amos Kilbright.

As for me I felt that I was doing my duty, and a good work.  But the responsibility was heavy, and my road was not at all clear before me.  My principal source of anxiety was in regard to my wife.  Should I tell her the truth about my new copyist, or not?  In the course of a night I resolved this question and determined to tell her everything.  When the man was merely Mr. Corbridge’s subject the case was different; but to have daily in my office a clerk who had been drowned one hundred and two years before, and not tell Mrs. Colesworthy of it would be an injustice to her.