Then Aunt Lucretia pointed one long bony finger at me, and hissed out with a true feminine disregard of grammar: 

“That ain’t him!”

“David,” said Aunt Lucretia, impressively, “had only one arm.  He lost the other in Madagascar.”

I was too dumfounded to take in the situation.  I remember thinking, in a vague sort of way, that Madagascar was a curious sort of place to go for the purpose of losing an arm; but I did not apprehend the full significance of this disclosure until I heard my wife’s distressed protestations that Aunt Lucretia must be mistaken; there must be some horrible mistake somewhere.

But Aunt Lucretia was not mistaken, and there was no mistake anywhere.  The arm had been lost, and lost in Madagascar, and she could give the date of the occurrence, and the circumstances attendant.  Moreover, she produced her evidence on the spot.  It was an old daguerreotype, taken in Calcutta a year or two after the Madagascar episode.  She had it in her hand-bag, and she opened it with fingers trembling with rage and excitement.  It showed two men standing side by side near one of those three-foot Ionic pillars that were an indispensable adjunct of photography in its early stages.  One of the men was large, broad-shouldered, and handsome—­ unmistakably a handsome edition of Aunt Lucretia.  His empty left sleeve was pinned across his breast.  The other man was, making allowance for the difference in years, no less unmistakably the Uncle David who was at that moment walking to and fro under our windows.  For one instant my wife’s face lighted up.

“Why, Aunt Lucretia,” she cried, “there he is!  That’s Uncle David, dear Uncle David.”

“There he is not,” replied Aunt Lucretia.  “That’s his business partner—­some common person that he picked up on the ship he first sailed in—­and, upon my word, I do believe it’s that wretched creature outside.  And I’ll Uncle David him.”

She marched out like a grenadier going to battle, and we followed her meekly.  There was, unfortunately, no room for doubt in the case.  It only needed a glance to see that the man with one arm was a member of my wife’s family, and that the man by his side, our Uncle David, bore no resemblance to him in stature or features.

Out on the lawn Aunt Lucretia sailed into the dear old gentleman in the five overcoats with a volley of vituperation.  He did not interrupt her, but stood patiently to the end, listening, with his hands behind his back; and when, with her last gasp of available breath, Aunt Lucretia demanded: 

“Who—­who—­who are you, you wretch?” he responded, calmly and respectfully: 

“I’m Tommy Biggs, Miss Lucretia.”

But just here my wife threw herself on his neck and hugged him, and cried: 

“You’re my own dear Uncle David, anyway!”

It was a fortunate, a gloriously fortunate, inspiration.  Aunt Lucretia drew herself up in speechless scorn, stretched forth her bony finger, tried to say something and failed, and then she and her hand-bag went out of my gates, never to come in again.