FullReads

I did not wonder, and my wife and I agreed to go with him that very evening to old Mr. Scott’s house. The old gentleman received us very cordially in his little parlor.

“You are a stranger in this town, sir,” he said to Kilbright. “I did not exactly catch your name–Kilbright?” he said, when it had been repeated to him, “that is one of my family names, but it is long since I have heard of anyone bearing it. My mother was a Kilbright, but she had no brothers, and no uncles of the name. My grandfather was the last of our branch of the Kilbrights. His name was Amos, and he was a Bixbury man. From what part of the country do you come, sir?”

“My name is Amos, and I was born in Bixbury.”

Old Mr. Scott sat up very straight in his chair. “Young man, that seems to me impossible!” he exclaimed. “How could there be any Kilbrights in Bixbury and I not know of it?” Then taking a pair of big silver spectacles from his pocket he put them on and attentively surveyed his visitor, whose countenance during this scrutiny was filled with emotion.

Presently the old gentleman took off his spectacles and, rising from his chair, went into another room. Quickly returning, he brought with him a small oil-painting in a narrow, old-fashioned frame. He stood it up on a table in a position where a good light from the lamp fell upon it. It was the portrait of a young man with a fresh, healthy face, dressed in an old-style high-collared coat, with a wide cravat coming up under his chin, and a bit of ruffle sticking out from his shirt-bosom. My wife and I gazed at it with awe.

“That,” said old Mr. Scott, “is the picture of my grandfather, Amos Kilbright, taken at twenty-five. He was drowned at sea some years afterward, but exactly how I do not know. My mother did not remember him at all. And I must say,” he continued, putting on his spectacles again, “that there is something of a family likeness between you, sir, and that picture. If it wasn’t for the continental clothes in the painting there would be a good deal of resemblance–yes, a very great deal.”

“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!”