Maezli had quickly run after her.  “Oh, please, mama, can I choose the song to-day?” she asked eagerly.

“Certainly, tell me which song you would like to sing best.”

Maezli seized the song-book effectively.

“But, Maezli, you can’t even read,” said the mother.  “How would the book help you?  Tell me how the song begins, or what lines you know.”

“I’ll find it right away,” Maezli asserted.  “Just let me hunt a little bit.”  With this she began to hunt with such zeal as if she were seeking a long-lost treasure.

“Here, here,” she cried out very soon, while she handed the book proudly over to her mother.

The latter took the book and read: 

   “Patience Oh Lord, is needed,
   When sorrow, grief and pain”—­

“But, Maezli, why do you want to sing this song?” her mother asked.

Kurt had stepped up to them and looked over the mother’s shoulder into the book.  “Oh, you sly little person!  So you chose the longest song you could find.  You thought that Lippo would see to it that we would sing every syllable before going to bed.”

“Yes, and you hate to go to bed much more than I do,” said Maezli a little revengefully.  It had filled her with wrath that her beautiful plan had been seen through so quickly.  “When you have to go, you always sigh as loud as yesterday and cry:  ‘Oh, what a shame!  Oh, what a shame!’ and you think it is fearful.”

“Quite right, cunning little Maezli,” Kurt laughed.

“Come, come, children, now we’ll sing instead of quarrelling,” the mother admonished them.  “We’ll sing ‘The lovely moon is risen.’  You know all the words of that from beginning to end, Maezli.”

They all started and finished the whole song in peace.

When the mother came back later on from the beds of the two younger children, the three elder ones sat expectantly around the table, for Kurt had told them of their mother’s promise to tell them the story of the family of Wallerstaetten that evening.  They had already placed their mother’s knitting-basket on the table in preparation of what was to come, because they knew that she would not tell them a story without knitting at the same time.

Smilingly the mother approached.  “Everything is ready, I see, so I can begin right away.”

“Yes, and right from the start, please; from the place where the ghost first comes in.”

The mother looked questioningly at Kurt.  “It seems to me, Kurt, that you still hope to find out about this ghost, whatever I may say to the contrary.  I shall tell you, though, how people first began to talk about a ghost in Wildenstein.  The origin of these rumors goes back many, many years.”

“There is a picture in the castle,” the mother began to relate, “which I often looked at as a child and which made a deep impression upon me.  It represents a pilgrim who wanders restlessly about far countries, despite his snow-white hair, which is blowing about his head, and despite his looking old and weather-beaten.  It is supposed to be the picture of the ancestor of the family of Wallerstaetten.  The family name is thought to have been different at that time.