For a minute Josh could only stare and say, "By gum." Then he took off his spectacles and wiped them as if they were responsible for the strange thing he had seen. But this, when he replaced them, only made the hurrying figure stand out clearer to his vision. "Marthy," said he, re-entering the post office and addressing his daughter, "I jes' seed a ghost; as sure as I'm standin' here, Marthy, I seed the ghost of Joey Haskell. It got off the train jes' as sure as I'm standin' here, Marthy, and called out ter me and went up the road. I seed it plain." "Same as you seed the goblins in Hiram Berry's cornfield before prohibition," said Marthy, who was not to be startled out of her rustic calm by any of her father's visions. And she continued sorting the mail which consisted of a newspaper and two letters. "If folks is dead and yer see 'em, it's sperits, ain't it?" Joshua demanded. "If folks is dead they don't come to Hicksville, I reckon," said the girl. One might suppose that Hicksville would be just the very place folks would go to, if they were dead. Be that as it may the young man was no ghost. He was just a little pale, and he looked as if he might have known much suffering, but he was no ghost. Up the little lane he went where goldenrod was blooming and where some of the birds that had beaten him on the journey southward were flitting and chirping in the trees. A little brook that bordered the narrow, fragrant way seemed hurrying along at his side, laughing in its pebbly bed, as if to give him a welcome home. Straight ahead he went till he came to the little white house. In the tiny front window hung a small faded square of cloth which might once have been red, and in the center of this was a crude homemade star of gold, but all the pristine brightness had gone from it. The young man opened the door, laid down his suitcase, stepped into the little sitting room, and taking down the tattered, faded symbol called out, "What's this doing here? If that isn't like Hicksville! The war over two years and--" Just then the astonished and frightened face of a little, wizened old lady appeared in the kitchen doorway. "_Mother!_" Then in another moment he was helping the trembling form to a chair and laughing and stroking the gray hair and putting his arm around that thin, wrinkled neck. It was almost too much for her. She looked at him with a kind of terror in her poor old eyes, as if she thought he was not real, and she clung to him as if she were drowning. "It's all right, Muddy," he laughed, kissing her and making a fine joke of her bewilderment; "feel of me; here, pinch me. Ouch! See how real I am? I'm hungry too, if anybody should ask you. I think I'll go up to Ruth Jillett's house for supper--" She only clung to him tighter--and cried a little more. "You was always thinking of Ruth first," she said. "Joey, my eyes is not what they wuz, I've seen you so much when I was alone here--in all the trouble--you wouldn't fool me--Joey?"