“Yes, the father lived right here with the children after that. He got a house keeper from somewhere in the neighborhood. He was young and the love of life was still in his soul, but he never married another woman. Years afterward the children would find him sitting under the rafter on which his wife died, weeping like a child.
“Yes, the son, young Fred, built the new house over yonder, after he got married, and took his father there to live. But the old man would come back daily and sit in the open door and sing the German hymn that was the favorite with his wife when they were courting across the sea.
“Yes, they say the house is haunted, since the old man died. People passing on moonlight nights insist that they see Beaver and his wife sitting in the open door, and hear a low crooning song. Me? Oh, I think the noise is the sighing of the pines over yonder.”
THE HOME-SICK HORSES
“Do horses think?” asked a lady of my acquaintance, and I hastened to assure her that they did. I told her of the horse my boy drives every Saturday evening to sell newspapers to the farmers near our home. Just so soon as the horse sees that the boy is delivering papers he turns into the gate of every regular customer and stops. If strangers get into the buggy old “Vinci” turns his head to see who it is and what they look like.
“Yes,” replied the woman, “and they have melancholy thoughts, and become home-sick, like human beings, too. The saddest thing I recall from my farm life happened when I was a girl of twelve years. We had a little team of bay horses named Colonel and Rock. When they were seven years old father sold them to a man who lived away back on the mountains. I cried when the man drove them away—cried because I hated to part with them, and because the poor horses did not realize that they were sold and were being driven away, never to return to the old barn and eat from the old manger. And every time I met the horses on the road I noticed how lean they were getting, and how melancholy and dejected they appeared. I could see sorrow written all over their faces.
“I used to lie in bed and think of the long weary trips they were obliged to make out over the rough mountain roads, and always pictured them leaning in their collars and drawing the heavy load to their new home. I don’t believe they were ever satisfied and contented with their new master, but always dreamed of returning to the old home some glad day.
“Two years after they were sold they were turned out into the pasture field for the night. Somehow I went to sleep thinking of Colonel and Rock that same night. Were they thinking of me? Some believe in the transmission of thought waves, and if this is true, why not the transmission of animal thoughts, as well as human thoughts that go out unspoken to distant friends?