The landscape had greatly changed since Mr. Wharton and his brother-in-law built their cabins in the wilderness. Those cabins were now sheds and kitchens appended to larger and more commodious dwellings. A village had grown up around them. On the spire of a new meeting-house a gilded fish sailed round from north to south, to the great admiration of children in the opposite schoolhouse. The wild-flowers of the prairie were supplanted by luxuriant fields of wheat and rye, forever undulating in wave-like motion, as if Nature loved the rhythm of the sea, and breathed it to the inland grasses. Neat little Bessie was a married woman now, and presided over the young Squire's establishment, in a large white house with green blinds. Charley had taken to himself a wife, and had a little Willie in the cradle, in whose infant features grandfather fondly traced some likeness to the lost one.
Such was the state of things, when Charles Wharton returned from the village-store, one day, with some articles wrapped in a newspaper from Indiana. A vague feeling of curiosity led him to glance over it, and his attention was at once arrested by the following paragraph:—
"A good deal of interest has been excited here by the appearance of a young man, who supposes himself to be twenty-three years old, evidently white, but with the manners and dress of an Indian. He says he was carried away from his home by Indians, and they have always told him he was then six years old. He speaks no English, and an Indian interpreter who is with him is so scantily supplied with words that the information we have obtained is very unsatisfactory. But we have learned that the young man is trying to find his mother. Some of our neighbors regard him as an impostor. But he does not ask for money, and there is something in his frank physiognomy calculated to inspire confidence. We therefore believe his statement, and publish it, hoping it may be seen by some bereaved family."
Charles rushed into the field, and exclaimed,—
"Father, I do believe we have at last got some tidings of Willie!"
"Where? What is it?" was the quick response.
The offered newspaper was eagerly seized, and the father's hand trembled visibly while he read the paragraph.
"We must start for Indiana directly," he said; and he walked rapidly toward the house, followed by his son.
Arriving at the gate, he paused and said,—
"But, Charles, he will have altered so much that perhaps we shouldn't know him; and it may be, as the people say, that this youth is an impostor."