useless; but not liking at present to alarm his domestics with a report
of the house being haunted, he resolved to await further evidences of
the supernatural visitation. Next morning at about the same hour, the
apparitions again entered his apartment; and acting as they had previously
done, gazed earnestly at him for some seconds ere they vanished. On the
morning of the third day the trio appeared again, when the gentleman of
the long robe, looking most earnestly at Frantz, pointed to the register,
the children, and the hearthstone; and then, as usual, disappeared under
the same circumstances as before.

Frantz was much distressed; he could not exactly comprehend the meaning of
this dumb show; and yet felt that some dire mystery was connected with
these phantoms, which he was called upon to unravel. After breakfast he
wandered out, and lost in the maze of thought, sauntered, ere he was aware
of it, into the churchyard. Shortly afterwards the church-door was opened
by the sexton, who kept his pickaxe and mattock in a corner of the belfry,
and Frantz remembering that as yet he had not entered the church, followed
him in, and was struck with the appearance of many portraits which hung
round the walls.

"What are these?" said he.

"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