The sunset lit up the far hills and faded, and the three sat together long into the evening, planning their journey to the White City. Mr. Marlowe was a popular story-teller. His love of folk-lore stories had given him his place as leader of the Village Improvement Society. He liked to relate stories in which old-time characters could be imitated by voice and manner. We shall use in this volume several stories of this kind, as he told them at some folk-lore social gatherings at the Fair. A favorite story of his, “The Old Auctioneer,” or “The Last Song of the Robin,” is a specimen of his peculiar stories, and a picture of that department of folk-lore called the “Folk-Lore Story.” We give it here:— THE LAST SONG OF THE ROBIN. “Susan, I can see that old farm now in my mind’s eye,—the country road, the guide-post on which was printed ‘20 Miles to Boston.’ I can see the painted tavern, and the dark pond where the mysterious travellers were killed. I can fancy hubbly oak-trees; the way-side orchard; the corner under the trees where the white avens bloomed; the balm bed, the red-pepper patch, the lilac-bushes, and the bouncing-bet. I can hear conquiddles, as we called the bobolinks, as they used to fly and sing in the windward meadows; red-winged blackbirds in the woodland pastures; martin birds under the eaves; and the first song of the robin as he came out of the woods, like the dove from Noah’s Ark, to see if the dry land had appeared. And, Susan, I can hear the last song of the robin.” The old man’s eye looked over the great prairie, which spread out before him like a sea. “It didn’t look like _that_, Susan, where the sun rises and sets in the same corn-field, and the rain-plover cries, and all is so wide, wide, wide. “Susan, I’ve been thinking. I never told you much about my twin sister, who lives on the old farm now on the North River, in Massachusetts. She’s seventy-five years old, come yesterday. I’ve had a letter from her. She’s in trouble, Susan. I feel that I ought to go to her, old as I am. I do, Susan.” “You are too old, grandpa.” “The old place is about to be sold at auction. She says so in the letter, written in the same hand that we used to write together when we sat side by side on the wooden bench at school. She says that the poorhouse will soon be her home, but that there is One coming round soon who will settle all things. She means, Susan—Well, you know who it is that soon comes round and settles all things when a person passes the shadow of seventy years. I am able to go, Susan, and I must go. Somehow I can feel invisible hands pushing me like, as of the old folk, and I have dreamed twice of the last song of the robin.