The father was pleased, for he thought, “Anyhow the lad will gain something by the experience.”
So the sexton took the youth home with him, and he had to ring the church bells. A few days passed, and the sexton woke him at midnight and told him to get up and go to the church tower to ring the bells. “You shall soon be taught how to shiver and shake,” thought the sexton as he hastened to the belfry ahead of the lad, and crept stealthily up the stairs.
The youth arrived a few minutes later and stumbled along up the stairway in the darkness. He was about to grasp the bell rope when he observed a white figure standing at the head of the stairs. “Who is there?” he called out, but the figure neither stirred nor spoke.
“Answer!” cried the lad, “or get out of the way. You have no business here in the night.”
But the sexton wanted the boy to think he was a ghost, and he did not stir.
The lad called out a second time: “What do you want here? Speak, if you are an honest fellow, or I’ll throw you down the stairs.”
“He never would dare undertake such a thing,” thought the sexton. So he made no sound and stood as still as if he were made of stone.
Once more the lad threatened the shrouded figure, and as he got no answer he sprang forward and threw the ghost down the stairs. The apparition bumped along down the steps and lay motionless in a corner. Then the lad rang the bells, walked home, and without saying a word to anybody went to bed. Soon he was fast asleep.
The sexton’s wife waited a long time for her husband, but he did not come, and at last she became anxious and woke up the lad. “Do you know what has become of my husband?” she asked. “He went up into the church tower in front of you.”
“No,” answered the lad; “but there was somebody standing at the head of the stairs in the belfry, and as he would neither reply nor go away, I thought he was a rogue and I threw him downstairs. Go and see if he was your husband. I should be sorry if he was.”