We had just bought this old house, a really old one and it was all run down, but shucks pa and ma and gramps and grandma had all lived in trailer houses And I always hated trailer house, so when I found out that Lewis Obenchain's old house was for sale, I told Clorilee we ought to buy it.

Well, the price won't bad, and so we went to the banker and I put up my four cows, three horse, and seven goats up as co lateral to get a loan on this big old house.

Well, we goes up there and I walks in and start looking around. Now when we first looked at it there wuza a lot of furniture, shucks there was a good range in the kitchen and two warm morning stoves, plus some tables and a few chairs plus a big old four poster bed in the upstairs room.

Shucks, somebody done took all that stuff, and we went from room to room hoping to find something to use to live on cause we surely couldn't buy nothing and he folks and my folks didn't have nothing to give us.

There weren�t nothing on the first floor, nothing that is cepting dust, lots of dust, so we went up to the second floor and went into each room, and heck we even looked in the two closets and there weren't one thing, not one durn nary thing left in that house. Then we started to go down the back stairs and I see this little door, just a small door, and I pulls on it and it don't open. So I pulls out my knife and slides it into the crack and then I gets this little door open.

Well, I look and see nothing but then I take my lighter and stick my head inside the little hole and see something, something back on the left side, so I reaches in there and pull on it and then it comes out.

My wife she screams and giggles like a little kid and slowly I pulls it out, and there it were, the only thing left in this old house, it was a candleholder.

I pulled this little brass holder with a large obviously home made candle on it. Man that thing was solid dust. But my wife who was a grinning and a jumping up and down as if she didn't have good sense, and she didn't but don't tell her.

Anyhow we takes the little brass candle stick and candle down stairs and we wiped it off and shucks it weren't much just a big old candle maybe twelve inches long sort of whitish in color.

We just looked at it, and then we left it there on the window sill and we went to town and found us some big heavy cardboard boxes, and some pots and pans so we could cook.

Finally we got back to our new house and it was getting dark, and of course we didn't have no lectricity, and we had forgotten to bring a kerosene lamp or a lantern, and the wife she says, "Well let's light our candle."

Well, we had turned a big old cardboard box upside down for a table and we were sittin on a couple milk crates we stole from the back of the store so I pulls out my lighter and clear away a little room about he wick and light it.

You won't believe it but when that little candle started to burn, when the wick started to suck that melting wax to it and the wax was a burning it was like somebody had put a whole bunch of bright lights in the room.

My wife, she sits there and puts both hands on the candle and then she looks at me and grins. "Put your hands here, put your hands on this candle for it feels funny. And she wouldn't shut up, so to make her shut up, I put my hands on the candle and shucks it gave me a funny feeling.

The wife and I just sat there holding that burning candle a grinning at each other. Then she looks at me, and says, "Make a wish, make a wish, and I will make a wish."

I had to and I wished that our little boy who died the other year was right here on this table with us. And later she says she wished for our house to be the finest in the village.

And we just wished, and then all at once, something happened for there on top of that cardboard box, was our son, Damien, who had died when he was six months old. I opened my eyes and there was our Damien laying there where that candle had been. I just stood there and my eyes got big as saucers, like that old story by Hans Christian Anderson. Remember the one about the old soldier who climbed down into the truck of that old tree? Remember that?

And then I heard a noise. It was Damien, Damien crawling on the box, so I grabs him fer he was about to fall off that cardboard box. But that wasn't no cardboard box. It was a big old polished dining room table that our dear dead Damien was crawling on. And then I looked around and the house was full of furniture and the walls were bright and we had lectric lights and I just sat there in that big old walnut dining room chair, not just any big old walnut dining room chair but one with arms.

So that there candle we found in that little hole on the back steps held a magic candle fer it came to life and brought our dear little dead son Damien back to us.