o see,
and they had hurried hither, not knowing whom they should find. Nor were
they much the wiser at first, for I was much changed and the light in
the room shone dim, but stood perplexed, wondering who this stranger
might be.

'Mary,' I said at length, 'Mary, do you not remember me, my sister?'

Then she cried aloud, and throwing herself into my arms, she wept there
a while, as would any of us were our beloved dead suddenly to appear
before our eyes, alive and well, and her husband clasped me by the hand
and swore heartily in his amazement, as is the fashion of some men when
they are moved. But the children stood staring blankly till I called the
girl to me, who now was much what her mother had been when we parted,
and kissing her, told her that I was that uncle of whom perhaps she had
heard as dead many years ago.

Then my horse, that all this while had been forgotten, having been
caught and stabled, we went to supper and it was a strange meal to me,
and after meat I asked for tidings. Now I learned that the fortune which
my old master Fonseca had left to me came home in safety, and that it
had prospered exceedingly under Lily's care, for she had spent but very
little of it for her maintenance, looking on it always as a trust rather
than as her own. When my death seemed certain my sister Mary had entered
on her share of my possessions, however, and with it had purchased
some outlying lands in Earsham and Hedenham, and the wood and manor of
Tyndale Hall in Ditchingham and Broome. These lands I made haste to say
she might keep as a gift from me, since it seemed that I had greater
riches than I could need without them, and this saying of mine pleased
her husband Wilfred Bozard not a little, seeing that it is hard for a
man to give up what he has held for many years.

Then I heard the rest of the story; of my father's sudden death, of how
the coming of the gold had saved Lily from being forced into marriage
with my brother Geoffrey, who afterwards had taken to evil courses which
ended in his decease at the age of thirty-one; of the end of Squire
Bozard, Lily's father and my old enemy, from an apoplexy which took
him in a sudden fit of anger. After this it seemed, her brother being
married to my sister Mary, Lily had moved down to the Lodge, having paid
off the charges that my brother Geoffrey had heaped upon his heritage,
and bought out my sister's rights to it. And here at the Lodge she had
lived ever since, a sad