Equal sixteen, in broad daylight.
"Many claimed that they had seen him, and the maids and wives got quite frightened. But my sister, a girl of sixteen, wishing to show that she was less foolish than the others, said: 'I don't believe a word of that; he who is once dead never comes back!' She said this, unfortunately, without a conviction of its truth, for she had been frightened many times herself. Thereupon one of the young people said: 'If you believe that, then you would have no reason to be afraid of him; his grave is only two paces from that of Kate's, who recently died. If you dare, go to the church-yard, pick a flower from Kate's grave, and bring it to us; then we will begin to believe that you are not afraid of the store-keeper's ghost. My sister was ashamed of being laughed at by the others, therefore she said: 'Oh, that's easy enough; what kind of a flower do you want?' 'The only white rose in the village blooms there; so bring us a bunch of those,' answered one of her friends. She got up and went out, and all the men praised her spirit; but the women shook their heads and said: 'If it only ends well!' My sister passed on to the cemetery; the moon shone brightly, but she began to tremble as the clock struck twelve while she was opening the church-yard gate. She clambered over many mounds which she knew, and her heart beat faster and faster the nearer she came to Kate's white rose bush and the ghostly store-keeper's grave. At last she reached it, and kneeled down, trembling with fear, to pluck some roses. Just then she thought she heard a noise close by; she turned around, and saw the earth flying out of a grave two steps away from her, and a form straightened itself up slowly in the grave. It was that of an old, pale-faced man, with a white night-cap on his head. My sister was greatly frightened; she turned to look once more to make sure that she had seen aright; but when the man in the grave began to say, in a nasal tone: 'Good evening, Miss! where do you come from so late?' she was seized with a deathly terror, and collecting all her strength, she sprang over the graves, ran to the house she had just left, and breathlessly related what she had seen; then she became so weak that she had to be carried home. Of what use was it that we found out the next day that it was the grave-digger who was making a grave there, and who had spoken to my poor sister? Before she could comprehend this she had fallen into a high fever, of which she died three days afterwards. She had gathered the roses for her own burial wreath."
A tear dropped from the wagoner's eye as he concluded, while the others regarded him with sympathy.
"So the poor child died in this implicit faith," said the young goldsmith. "I recollect a legend in that connection, which I should like to tell you, and that unfortunately is connected with such a tragedy."
[THE CAVE OF STEENFOLL.]
A SCOTTISH LEGEND.
On one of Scotland's rocky islands, there dwelt many years ago, two fishermen, who lived in complete harmony. Both were unmarried; neither of them had any relatives living; and their common labor, although differently directed, sufficed to support them both. They were of about the same age, but in person and disposition they resembled each other as little as do an eagle and a sea-calf.
Kaspar Strumpf was a short, stout man, with a broad, fat, full-moon face, and good-natured, laughing eyes, to which sorrow and care appeared to be strangers. He was not only fat, but sleepy and lazy as well; and therefore the house work, cooking and baking, and repairing of nets for the capture of fish for their own table and for the market, devolved on him, as well as a large part of the cultivation of the small field attached to their cabin. Quite the opposite was his companion--tall and lank, with Roman nose and keen eyes; he was known as the most industrious and luckiest fisherman, the most daring cliff-climber after birds and down, the hardest field worker, on the whole island. Besides all this, he was considered the keenest trader on the Kirkwall market; but as his wares were good, and his transactions above reproach, every one dealt willingly with him. Thus William Falcon and Kaspar Strumpf--with whom the former, avaricious as he was, freely divided his hardly-earned gains--not only made a good living, but were in a fair way of acquiring a certain degree of wealth. But a competence would not satisfy Falcon's covetous soul; he wanted to be rich, extremely rich, and as he had already found out that riches accumulate but slowly in the usual course of industry, he at last settled into the conviction that he should have to attain his riches through some extraordinary stroke of fortune. When this idea had once taken possession of his mind, there was no room left for any thing else, and he began to talk this shadowy windfall over with Kaspar Strumpf, as though it had already come to pass. Kaspar, who received everything that Falcon said as scripture, repeated all this to his neighbors: and so the report was spread abroad that William Falcon had either sold his soul to the evil one, or had at least received an offer for it from the prince of the infernal regions.
At first, these reports caused much amusement to Falcon; but gradually he began to entertain the notion that a spirit might sometime reveal a treasure to him, and he no longer contradicted his acquaintances when they twitted him on the subject. He continued his usual occupations, but with far less zeal than before, and often consumed a great part of the time, that he had formerly passed in fishing or other useful avocations, in idle search for some kind of an adventure by which he should suddenly become rich. To still further complete this unfortunate tendency of his mind, it happened that as he was standing one day on the lonely sea-shore, looking out on the restless sea as if he were expecting his good fortune would come from thence, a large wave rolled a yellow ball to his feet amongst a mass of moss and loosened stone--a ball of gold!
Falcon stood as if bewitched. His hopes, then, had not been unsubstantial dreams; the sea had given him gold, beautiful shining gold, the fragment probably of a heavy bar of gold which the sea had rolled on its bottom into the size and shape of a musket ball. And now it was clear to his mind that somewhere on this coast there must have been a treasure ship wrecked, and that he had been selected as the chosen one to raise this buried treasure from the sea. From this time forth, this search for treasure became the passion of his life. He strove to conceal the golden nugget even from his friend, so that others might not discover his purpose. He neglected everything else, and spent his days and nights on this coast, not casting his net for fishes, but throwing out a scoop, that he had specially prepared for the purpose, for gold.
But he found poverty instead of wealth; for he earned nothing now himself, and Kaspar's sleepy efforts would not support them both. In the search for the larger mass of gold, not only the nugget was used up, but the entire property of the two men as well. But as Strumpf had formerly received the largest part of his living by Falcon's efforts, taking it all as a matter of course, so now he looked on the profitless undertaking of his friend silently and without a murmur; and it was just this meek forbearance on the part of his friend that spurred Falcon on to continue his restless search for wealth. But what made him still more active in his search was, that as often as he laid down to rest and closed his eyes in sleep, a word was sounded in his ear that he seemed to have heard very plainly, and that always appeared to be the same word, and yet he could never recall it. To be sure, he did not see what connection this circumstance, singular as it was, might have with his present purpose; but upon a spirit like William Falcon's everything made an impression, and even this mysterious whisper helped to strengthen his belief that great good luck was in store for him, which he expected to find only in a heap of gold.