a certain fair day in the autumn Joshua Hicks stood in the doorway of
the Hicksville post office and contemplated the chickens which were
congregated on the store platform waiting for the mail. He looked as if
he had been standing there uninterruptedly since we last saw him. His
octagon-shaped spectacles were exactly half way down his nose, and his
nose was just as long as it was on the day we made his acquaintance--if
anything, a little longer. He was waiting for the big daily event in
Hicksville, the arrival of the train.

But a bigger event than that was to arouse Hicksville. When the train
arrived a solitary figure got out, a young man with a suitcase, who
waved his hand familiarly to Joshua and called, "Hello, Josh," as he
strode away up the road.

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 be