THE WHITE SOUL.[1]
The people he had named were a husband and wife, shopkeepers, with a good business. They had taken in a woman, a widow, as they thought, to board with them for life.[2]
The first night after she came the wife suddenly woke up the husband, saying:—
‘What is it that kneels at the foot of the bed? surely it is a white soul.’
‘I see nothing,’ said the husband; ‘go to sleep!’
The wife said no more, but the next night it was the same thing, and the next, and the next; and she described so sincerely what she saw, and with so much earnestness, that the husband could have no doubt that what she said was true. And as he saw it disturbed her rest, and made her ill, he said:—
‘If it comes again, to-night, we will conjure it.’
It had been going on almost a month (I told you it happened in October), and it was just the night of All Souls’ day[3] that he happened to say this.
That night, again, the wife woke him with a start—