The three now had no sooner reached the last step than the attic laid its mystic hush upon them. They stood still and looked about, each somehow waiting for one of the others to speak. It was Grandma who broke the silence softly: "You had some of the old furniture moved there in the corner but the rest is just as it was forty years ago--when I was here last." Grandma knew the history of pretty near everything in sight and they followed her about, looking and listening. Somehow there was at first no desire to touch and handle things. But soon the strange charm of an old attic stole over them and they began to look more closely at things, to exclaim over weird relics, to touch old books and quaint garments. Then as the wonders multiplied and the rain drummed steadily on the roof, time and the world without was forgotten and the three became absorbed in the past. When first she had looked about her Grandma's eyes had searched for a certain trunk, and when at last she spied it something like an old grief clouded her eyes. But as she peered about and began pulling things out to the light she forgot the trunk with the brass nailheads. She laughed when she came across the crinoline hoops and the droll little velvet bonnets. "Here are your great-grandmother's crinolines, John. My! The times we girls had playing with these things, for even in our day they were old-fashioned. And this little velvet hat I remember Cynthia wore once to an old-time social and took a prize." Over in another corner Nan was making discoveries. "My conscience--look at this!" she suddenly cried. "Here's an etching, a genuine etching, a beautiful thing and all covered with dust. Why, the one I bought for a hundred and fifty dollars in Holland last year isn't half as good. Why, whoever had it put up here?" From the other side of the huge room Cynthia's son wanted to know if an old grandfather's clock couldn't be mended. "Why, it must be as old as the hills. It has a copy of Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac pasted on the back. It--why, it's an heirloom and I'm going to get it patched up." "That clock used to tick in the up-stairs hall forty years ago--I remember--" Grandma stopped as if a sudden thought had struck her. She dropped an old faded lamp mat and a rag rug and came over to look at the face of what had been an old friend. Many and many a time its mellow booming of the hours had cut short a lengthy, merry conference in Cynthia's room and sent her scurrying home to her waiting tasks. "John," whispered Grandma with sudden intuition, "I don't believe there's anything the matter with that clock. It was stopped--they said your grandfather stopped it after your mother left for India. I used to watch him wind it--here, let me at it. Yes," triumphantly, "here's the key." Grandma's hands shook noticeably and her lips trembled as she wound it. And when it began to whir and then settled down to its clear even tick Grandma just sat down and cried a bit.