“What was that? Well, well, the robins used to sing their last songs in the Indian-summer weather, before they went to their covers in the deep woods for the long winter. It was peculiarsome like. It was when the apples and leaves were falling, leaving bare the nests in the trees; after the wild-geese had flown over, and the partridges had begun to fly. I’ve heard ’em many a time. I would like to hear them once more, as I used to hear, them among the red trees by the old cranberry meadows. You may think me queer, Susan, and haunted like; but I long to see that old slanting roof just once more, and my twin sister, who was rocked in the same cradle with me, and is now in sorrow, and to hear that last song of the robin. It seems as though at times I could hear _that_ now.” He listened. There was a murmur of the wind in the cottonwood-trees. “It is comin’ Thanksgiving, Susan. It makes me think of the folks and times that are gone; of the succotash, pandowdy, and puddings, and pumpkin pies. There never was no such days anywhere like those, and my hungry heart aches to spend one more Thanksgiving with my sister Susan. The last one I spent there was sort of queer. The old minister he ate of all the dishes in the kitchen before the table was set, and then there were so many of them that it made him heavy like, and he fell asleep saying grace, and we sat there feeling awkward like, and the victuals all got cold. Oh, how I would like to talk over those old times with Susan, my old sister Susan! “And, Susan, my little granddaughter, I hid some letters behind a board in the haunted garret under the candle-poles, and there’s going to be a vendue, and I want to see them once again. That was more than fifty years ago. [Illustration: THE POST OFFICE.] “Haunted garret? Such a place seems queer to you, does it, Susan? We have no haunted garrets here out West. All the old houses and farms in the Cape towns had their ghost-stories, and a family couldn’t have amounted to much who hadn’t been followed by a ghost sometime.” It was near sunset. Like a high arch of glory rose the red light in the western air,—liquid rubies and gold. Against the sunset stood the black outlines of some Lombardy poplars and cottonwood-trees, and under the trees were three graves. The old man’s face turned towards the graves. He sat musing for a time in deep thought. The wind rippled through the faded leaves, and scattered them about the graves. “Susan!” “Well, grandpa?” “Susan!” “Yes, I hear. What is it? Grandpa, I was thinking of the haunted garret.”