He was still limpin' around from that wound he got--and of course it was all over or everyone knew it would be before he got well enough to go on back again. Hm," she laughed shortly, knowingly, as she squinted at her needle, "At least that's what he said-----"
 "What, Aunt Maw?"
 "Why, that he was waitin' for his wound to heal, but, pshaw!"- she spoke quietly, shaking her head--"Sam was lazy--oh, the laziest feller I ever saw in all my life!" she cried. "Now if the truth were told, that was all that was wrong with him--and let me tell you something; it didn't take long for him to get well when he saw the war was comin' to an end and he wouldn't have to go on back and join the rest of them.
 He was limpin' around there one day leanin' on a cane as if every step would be his last, and the next day he was walkin' around as if he didn't have an ache or a pain in the world....
 "'That's the quickest recovery I ever heard of, Sam,' father said to him. 'Now if you've got some more medicine out of that same bottle, I just wish you'd let me have a little of it.'--Well, then, so Sam was there." She went on in a moment, "And of course Bill Joyner was there -old Bill Joyner, your great-grandfather, boy--as hale and hearty an old man as you'll ever see!" she cried.
 " Bill Joyner... why he must have been all of eighty-five right then, but you'd never have known it to look at him! Do anything! Go anywhere! Ready for anything!" she declared. "And he was that way, sir, right up to the hour of his death--lived over here in Libya Hill then, mind you, fifty miles away, but if he took a notion that he'd like to talk to one of his childern, why he'd stand right out and come, with out waitin' to get his hat or anything. Why yes! didn't he turn up one day just as we were all settin' down to dinner, without a hat or coat or anything!" she said. "'Why, what on earth!' said mother. 'Where did you come from, Uncle Bill?'--she called him Uncle Bill, you know.
 'Oh, I came from Libya Hill,' says he. 'Yes, but how did you get here?' she says--asks him, you know. 'Oh, I walked it,' he says. 'Why, you know you didn't!' mother says, 'And where's your hat and coat?' she says. 'Oh, I reckon I came without 'em,' he says, 'I was out workin' in my garden and I just took a notion that I'd come to see you all, so I didn't stop to get my hat or coat,' he said, 'I just came on!' And that's just exactly what he'd done, sir," she said with a deliberate emphasis.
 "He just took the notion that he'd like to see us all, and he lit right out, without stoppin' to say hello or howdy-do to anybody!"
 She paused for a moment, reflecting. Then, nodding her head slightly, in confirmation, she concluded: "But that was Bill Joyner for you! That's just the kind of feller that he was."
 "So he was there that day?" said George.
 "Yes, sir. He was right there standin' next to father. Father was a Major, you know," she said, with a strong note of pride in her voice, "but he was home on leave at the time the war ended. Why yes! he came home every now and then all through the war. Bein' a Major, I guess he could get off more than the common soldiers," she said proudly. "So he was there, with old Bill Joyner standin' right beside him. Bill, of course--he'd come because he wanted to see Rance, and he knew he'd be comin' back with all the rest of them. Of course, child," she said, shaking her head slightly, "none of us had seen your great-uncle Rance since the beginning of the war. He had enlisted at the very start, you know, when war was declared, and he'd been away the whole four years. And oh! they told it, you know, they told it!" she half-muttered, shaking her head slightly with a boding kind of deprecation, "what he'd been through--the things he'd had to do- whew-w!" she said suddenly with an expostulation of disgust--"Why, the time they took him prisoner, you know, and he escaped, and had to do his travelin' by night, sleepin' in barns or hidin' away somewheres in the woods all day, I reckon--and that was the time--whew-w!-
 'Go away,' I said, 'it makes me shudder when I think of it!'--why that he found that old dead mule they'd left there in the road--and cut him off a steak and eaten it--'And the best meat,' says, 'I ever tasted!'-
 Now that will give you some idea of how hungry he must have been!
 "Well, of course, we'd heard these stories, and none of us had seen him since he went away, so we were all curious to know. Well, here they came, you know, marchin' along on that old river road, and you could hear all the people cheerin', and the men a-shoutin' and the women folks a-cryin', and here comes Bob Patten.