Her tone was by no means confident as, pointing towards it with her finger, she asked the doctor: "What is that ?" The physician had paused with her, and seeing the strange object to which the burgomaster's wife pointed, recoiled a step himself.

But the cool-headed man quickly perceived the real nature of the ghostly apparition, and leading Maria forward exclaimed smiling: "What in the world are you doing there on the floor, Father Damianus ?" "I am scouring the boards," replied the priest quietly.
"Right is right," cried the doctor indignantly.

"You are too good for maid-servant's work, Father Damianus, especially when there is plenty of money without an owner here in the house, and we can find as many scrubbing-women as we want to-morrow." "But not to-day, doctor; and the young lady won't stay in yonder room any longer.

You ordered her to go to sleep yourself, and Sister Gonzaga says she won't close her eyes so long as she is next door to the corpse." "Then Van Hout's men ought to have carried her on her bed into the old lady's beautiful sitting-room." "That's sealed, and so are all the other handsome chambers on this story.

The men were obliging and tried to find scrub-women, but the poor things are afraid of the plague." "Such rumors grow like wire-grass," cried the doctor.