Amongst the most cheerful things in the place, however, was the countenance of the priest himself. He was a man of somewhat more than sixty years of age, but fresh, firm, and unbroken, with a complexion which, originally fair and smooth, seemed only to have grown fairer and more smooth with years; and though the untonsured part of his hair was as white as driven snow, his blue eye was as clear and bright as in youth. His features were high and somewhat aquiline; his eyebrows long and white; but that which denoted age more than aught else, was the falling in of the lips by the sad ravages of time upon those incessant plagues of life--the teeth. His countenance was a cheerful and contented one; not without lines of thought, and perhaps of care; but to the eye of one accustomed to read the character upon the face, the expression would have indicated a temperament and disposition naturally easy and good-humoured, without any want of mental energy and activity.
"Ah! Ferdinand," he said, as soon as he beheld his visitor, "you have kept me long, my son, but that matters not--it is a terrible night, and the way somewhat troublesome to find. But, all good angels! what makes you look so pale, boy? Yours is not a cheek to turn white at a flash of lightning. Sit down, sit down, my son, and refresh yourself. See, I have provided for your entertainment."
"The way is a terrible one, good Father," replied the young man, seating himself, and resting his arm upon the table, "and it is one I will never tread willingly again, unless it be to return home this night, though that I would not do, if there were any way of avoiding it."
"Why, how now, how now?" asked the priest. "Never let it be said that you have been frightened by a score of old monuments, and a few dry bones."
"That's not all, good Father, that's not all," answered the young man; and he proceeded to relate, in a low voice, all that he had heard and seen as he came thither.
"Phantasms of the imagination!" exclaimed the priest. "Voices in the serfs burying-place! lights in the chapel vaults! No, no, good youth, such things are quite impossible; these are but tales of the castle hall, told in the winter's evening round the fire, which have so filled your imagination that you realize them to yourself in a dark, stormy night, and a gloomy place. I have gone up there a hundred times, by night and day, and never yet saw aught but old crumbling stones and mouldy arches, and fleshless bones here and there; things fitted, surely, to produce solemn thoughts of the mortality of man's frame, of the vanity of all his works, and the emptiness of his glory, but not to fill your head with fancies such as these."
"But, Father, I tell you I heard the voices as distinctly as I hear you speak," the youth rejoined, in a half angry tone; "that I saw the light as plainly as I see this before me."
"A flash of lightning," replied the priest.
"No, no," answered his companion, "I never saw a flash of lightning that lasted uninterrupted, calm, and quiet, for five minutes, nor you either, Father; nor did I ever hear the thunder ask, 'Who is he?' nor laugh and hoot like a devil. I would not have believed it myself, had I not had eyes and ears to witness; and so I cannot blame you for doubting it. I never was a believer in ghosts or phantoms, or spirits visiting the earth, till now. I thought them but old women's tales, as you do."
"Nay, nay," exclaimed the priest, eagerly, "I did not say that;" and he fell into a deep fit of thought before he proceeded farther. At length he continued, in a grave tone, saying, "You must not suppose, Ferdinand, that I doubt, in any degree, that spirits are at times permitted to visit or revisit this world. We have the warrant of Scripture for it, and many facts of the kind are testified by fathers of the church, and holy men, whom it would be a sin to suspect of falsehood, and a presumption to accuse of foolishness. But I do think that in thousands of instances where such apparitions are supposed to have taken place, especially in the present day, there is much more either of folly or deception than of truth. In this case, although I have heard the women, and some of the boors, declare that they have seen strange sights about the castle, I have always fancied the report mere nonsense, as I never beheld anything of the kind myself; but there certainly was something odd and unaccountable in the Graf suddenly shutting up the great hall where his brother used always to feast with his retainers; and people did say that he had seen a sight there which had made him dread to enter it again; yet I have passed through the vaults and the hall, many a time since, without ever beholding aught to scare me.