"The pretty milliner’s story was even more startling and unusual. She declared that her grandmother’s ghost had come to her bedside every night since she was a small child. She said that she never feared it, but took it as a matter of course. I think that these nightly visitations took a whole lot out of her. I can see her yet running down the steep, narrow stairs in the mornings to the shop where I was working–I was always an early riser–her face looking as if it had been whitewashed, more so perhaps because her hair and eyes were so dark.
"She was often nervous and irritable, and I laid it all to the vital force which the ghost must be drawing out of her to materialize, but she said it was only her liver which made her so dauncy. I begged her to let me sleep with her, that I did not think that the ghost would come if I was present, and if it did it could draw on some of my vitality, as I was a big, strong, hearty girl. She would not let me sleep with her, saying that she had gotten used to the ghost.
"One evening Miss Knecht and I were invited to a chicken and waffle supper at the home of old Mrs. Eilert, wife of the potter, whose house was the last one in town. In those days there was quite a distance not built up between the potter’s home and the rest of the village. The holidays were approaching, and we were getting ready for the Christmas trade, consequently stayed later in the shop than we had expected.
"As I said before, Mrs. Eilert lived at the extreme end of town. When we were a few squares from home we noticed a woman dressed in mourning who seemed to be following us, or at least going in our direction. She was an entire stranger to us, and we wondered where she could be going; so each house we came to I would look back to see whether she entered. When we were half a square from where we were going, we passed a house which stood back pretty far from the road. There was considerable ground to the place, and a high board fence all around. After we passed the gate I turned, as before, to see whether this woman would enter. She did not. I watched her until she was past the gate quite a ways. I turned and told my companion she had not entered, and immediately turned to look at her again, and she was gone!
"Where could she have gone in those few seconds in which I was not looking at her? Everywhere there was open space–nowhere for her to hide. Had she jumped the fence she could not have gotten out of sight in those few seconds. I have often wondered since what it was.
"When we reached the Eilert home I noticed that Miss Knecht was in a highly unstrung condition, more so than I had ever seen her before. We told the story, and the old potter smiled grimly, saying: ‘You surely have seen the ghost of the landlord’s daughter who disappeared, all dressed in black, after being jilted by the robber.’
"Emilie shook her pretty dark curls, muttering that she feared it was something worse. She was afraid to go home that night, and we spent the night with our friends; yet she would not remain unless given a room by herself. In the morning she was in a most despondent mood; she had not seen her grandmother–what could it mean?
"The woman in black must have been her ‘familiar’ leaving her, warning her to that effect, and not the ghost of the landlord’s daughter after all, she maintained. I tried to reassure her that she would see her grandmother once she was in her own room, but next morning brought the tidings that the faithful spirit was again absent. This continued for a week, my friend becoming more nervous and despondent.
"One morning she did not come downstairs, so at eight o’clock I went up after her, to see if she were ill. The bed was empty, and had not been slept in. I searched the house and found her lying dead on a miserable cot in the cellar–beautiful in death–which an elderly Dutchman sometimes occupied, when cutting wood and taking care of the garden for us. She had drunk a potion of arsenic that she had bought some months before to poison rats which infested the cellar, but her lovely face was not marked.
“I left town shortly afterwards, and have never been back until tonight.”