Written from Belfast, Maine. Dated "August near September Eighteen Hundred and November." Opens "Dear Cousin." He says that he will keep writing until she tells him to stop, and says he thought it was understood when he left Rockland that they would be allowed to correspond, and that receiving letters will help keep him from "going to the Lunatic Asylum." He reports that he went to Searsport that afternoon and met several people, including one man "who calls himself a brother Reb. I guess he had seen a barrel of 'Old Rye' rolled into somebody's door and the smell of it had made him feel queer about the head or in other words I think he was slightly inebriated or he would not have claimed relationship in such a hurry." These were, he writes, the first people he had met since leaving Rockland. He closes "Your Rebelious Cousin, Robert Rankin," and writes her name below as "Miss Grace Darling, Rockland."

Envelope postmarked at Belfast, August 23. Addressed to "Miss Grace D. Nichols, Rockland, Maine." This letter may have been written before the item in Folder 57.