"Isn't your name Edwards—Jonathan Edwards?" I exclaimed.
He stood for some moments regarding me without speaking. "Wal, they don't call me that here," he said at last, still regarding me fixedly.
I told him then who I was and how I had come to be there. I was not absolutely certain that it was Grandpa Edwards, yet I felt pretty sure. His hair was a little whiter and his face somewhat more wrinkled; yet he had changed surprisingly little. His hearing, too, did not appear to be much impaired, and he was doing a pretty good job of weeding without glasses.
I could see that he was in doubt about admitting his identity to me. "It is only by accident I saw you," I said. "I did not come to find you."
Still he did not speak and seemed disinclined to do so, or to admit anything about himself. I was sorry that I had stopped to accost him, but now that I had done so I went on quite as a matter of course to give him tidings of the old Squire and of grandmother Ruth. "They are both living and well; they speak of you at times," I said. "Your disappearance grieved them. I don't think they ever blamed you."
His face worked strangely; his hands, grasping the hoe handle, shook; but still he said nothing.
"Have you ever had word from your folks at the old farm?" I asked him at length. "Have you had any news of them at all?"
He shook his head. I then informed him that his son Jotham had died four years before; that Tom had gone abroad as an engineer; that Catherine was living at home, managing the old place and doing it well; that she had paid off the mortgage and was prospering.
He listened in silence; but his face worked painfully at times.
As I was speaking an elderly woman came to the door of the house and stood looking toward us.