“The pictures, sir, of all your predecessors; know you not, that in some of our country churches it is the custom to hang up the likenesses of all the gentlemen who ever held the living?”

Frantz, in a tone of indifference, replied, that he fancied he had heard of such a thing.

“’Tis, sir,” continued the man, “a custom with which you must comply at any rate.  Why, bad as was our last pastor Herr Von Weetzer, he honoured us so far, that there hangs his picture.”

Frantz advanced to view a newly painted portrait, which hung last in the line of his predecessors; and then the young man started back, changed colour, and the deadly faintness of terror seized his relaxing frame; for in it he recognised, exact in costume and features, the perfect likeness of his adult spectral visiter!

“Good God!” cried Frantz, “how very extraordinary!”

“A nice looking man, sir,” said the sexton, not noticing his emotion; “pity ’tis that he was so wicked.”

“Wicked!” exclaimed Frantz, almost unconscious of what he said; “how wicked?”

“Oh, sir, I can’t exactly say how wicked; but a bad gentleman was Mr. Von Weetzer, that’s certain.”

“Wicked! well—­was he married?” asked Frantz, with apparent unconcern.

“Why, no, sir;” replied the sexton, with a significant look; “people do say he was not; but if all tales be true that are rife about him, ’tis a sure thing he ought to have been.”

“Hah! hum!” muttered Frantz, and a slight blush tinged his fine countenance.  “His children you say—­”

“Lord, sir!  I said nothing about them—­who told you?  Few folks at Steingart, I guess, knew he had any but myself.  ’Tis thought the poor things did not come fairly by their ends; and for certain, I never buried them!”

Frantz stood for some minutes absorbed in thought; at length he said—­ “were they baptized?  I have a reason for asking.”

“Perhaps sir, it is, that you are thinking if the poor, little, innocent creatures were not christened, they’d no right to be laid in consecrated ground.”

“No matter what I think; I believe I have the register.”

“You have, sir; please then to look at page 197, line 19, and I fancy you’ll find the names of Gertrude and Erhard Dow, (’twas their poor misfortunate mother’s sirname,) down as baptized.”

“I have,” interrupted Frantz, with an air of extreme solemnity, “seen, as I believe, those children and their father!”

“Mein Gott!” cried the sexton in excessive alarm—­“seen them?—­Seen Herr Von Weetzer! They do say he walks—­dear, dear!—­and after the shocking unchristian death that he died too!  Where, sir?  Where and when?”

“No matter, I also have my suspicions.”

“He murdered them himself, sir—­the wicked man!  ’Twasn’t their mother, my poor niece, God rest her soul!  She died as easy as a lamb.  Indeed, indeed, it wasn’t her.”