Was "Joel" really Joel in Seeds of Yesterday?

Okay, so some creepy old man shows up pretending to be a long-lost relative shortly before you (think you) are "coming into your own". If this had happened to anyone but Bart, I would find it really hard to believe but we know that Bart had a hard time letting go of Malcolm from the ending of If There Be Thorns (him clutching the blank journal and mouthing words) and he always associated power with Malcolm so it's kind of logical that he would accept someone claiming to be Malcolm's son, right?

BUT let's look at this rationally: The Foxworth family presided over that mountainside for years and years. The villagers hated them (or at least some of them did) but surely they kept track of everything going on with them. The family were their celebrities after all. So of course it would be HUGE news when not just one but both of Olivia and Malcolm's young sons died. It's not hard to imagine that sort of thing would stick with a young man around the same age of one of the sons and make an impression...

Now let's fast forward. Say the same young man left the mountains not long after Joel died--or whenever--and cut off contact with his family (if he had any to begin with). Maybe he really did find a monastery or something that kept him gone for years. But perhaps he also kept in touch with someone back home or even just went back to the mountains to die... and finds a new Foxworth mansion standing at the top of the mountain.

Okay, so he's intrigued and maybe he goes around the village to "introduce" himself and begins eavesdropping... only to learn that a relative of the Foxworth family is set to inherit the family fortune and is going to move back into Foxworth Hall. He probably even hears the gossip about Cathy and possibly Christopher, though their relationship probably isn't known about yet. And maybe somebody even mentions Malcolm and/or Olivia and their lost boys... and wheels start turning.

Perhaps this elderly man who is dying of cancer (or whatever) begins wondering why he should die alone in his small house in a village where he knows nobody and has no real comfort when instead, he could die in comfort with the love of a faux "family" surrounding him. He is the same age Joel would be if he had lived and none of the Foxworths who knew Joel are still alive, and even if they were... Well, he's old enough to fool them, he reasons with himself.

So he begins to perfect the art of skulking around and eavesdropping, learning every bit of information about the Foxworths that he can as he waits for the moment to strike. He learns that the young man is Bartholomew Foxworth and as soon as he's ready, he waits for Bart to arrive and shows up at the door to greet him.

Let's also say he's a very religious man who is shocked and horrified at what Bart has to tell him about the family history, leading into everything that happens between him and Cathy throughout the book.

...Okay, whew! That was a lot to type. But hopefully you get where I'm going with this. Joel loved his mom, and I just somehow think he would have let her know somehow that he was still alive. And I don't quite buy that he ended up just like his father who he despised.

Also, I think it's feasible that "Joel" or whoever he may have been probably hated the Foxworths--they all did. That would explain why he might "prank" and try to kill Jory (I just don't buy that Bart would do that), torment Darren and Deidre, and do everything else he possibly did. And he would have had all the access to the information he needed because of Bart's loose tongue. (And of course it's possible he really was a very religious nutcase!)

So, what is your opinion? Was "Joel" really Joel or an impostor?