As we sat thus one afternoon under the trees a funeral passed us by.  It was that of a pretty young girl, whom I had often seen, the daughter of one of the rangers of the forest.  The poor man was walking behind the coffin of his darling; she was his only child, and he looked quite heartbroken.

Peasants walking two-and-two came behind, they were singing a funeral hymn.

I rose to mark my respect as they passed, and joined in the hymn they were very sweetly singing.

My companion shook me a little roughly, and I turned surprised.

She said brusquely, “Don’t you perceive how discordant that is?”

“I think it very sweet, on the contrary,” I answered, vexed at the interruption, and very uncomfortable, lest the people who composed the little procession should observe and resent what was passing.

I resumed, therefore, instantly, and was again interrupted.  “You pierce my ears,” said Carmilla, almost angrily, and stopping her ears with her tiny fingers.  “Besides, how can you tell that your religion and mine are the same; your forms wound me, and I hate funerals.  What a fuss!  Why you must die—­everyone must die; and all are happier when they do.  Come home.”

“My father has gone on with the clergyman to the churchyard.  I thought you knew she was to be buried today.”

“She?  I don’t trouble my head about peasants.  I don’t know who she is,” answered Carmilla, with a flash from her fine eyes.

“She is the poor girl who fancied she saw a ghost a fortnight ago, and has been dying ever since, till yesterday, when she expired.”

“Tell me nothing about ghosts.  I shan’t sleep tonight if you do.”

“I hope there is no plague or fever coming; all this looks very like it,” I continued.  “The swineherd’s young wife died only a week ago, and she thought something seized her by the throat as she lay in her bed, and nearly strangled her.  Papa says such horrible fancies do accompany some forms of fever.  She was quite well the day before.  She sank afterwards, and died before a week.”

“Well, her funeral is over, I hope, and her hymn sung; and our ears shan’t be tortured with that discord and jargon.  It has made me nervous.  Sit down here, beside me; sit close; hold my hand; press it hard-hard-harder.”

We had moved a little back, and had come to another seat.

She sat down.  Her face underwent a change that alarmed and even terrified me for a moment.  It darkened, and became horribly livid; her teeth and hands were clenched, and she frowned and compressed her lips, while she stared down upon the ground at her feet, and trembled all over with a continued shudder as irrepressible as ague.  All her energies seemed strained to suppress a fit, with which she was then breathlessly tugging; and at length a low convulsive cry of suffering broke from her, and gradually the hysteria subsided.  “There!  That comes of strangling people with hymns!” she said at last.  “Hold me, hold me still.  It is passing away.”