confounded, followed with his eyes those whom he could but fancy to be apparitions, as with noiseless steps they walked, or rather glided, towards a table which stood near the fireplace; upon this laid the parish register, coming in front of which, the man opened it with a solemn air, and turning over a few pages, pointed with his finger to some record, upon which the fair children seemed to gaze with interest and attention.  The trio smiled mournfully at each other, then moving so that they stood upon the hearth immediately opposite the foot of Frantz’s bed, and facing the affrighted young minister, he had full leisure to contemplate his strange visiters.  That they were of a superhuman nature, he was warranted in concluding from their appearance in so solitary a place as Steingart—­from their unceremonious entree at that unusual hour into his dormitory, and from their movements, actions, and awful silence.  Frantz endeavoured to recollect the form of adjuration, and also that of exorcism, commonly employed to tranquillize the turbulent departed, but vainly; his brain was giddy; his thoughts distracted; his heart throbbed to agony with terror, and his tongue refused its office.  With a violent effort he sprang up in his bed, and in his address to the speechless trio, had proceeded as far as—­“In the name of—­” when the children sank down into the very hearthstone upon which they stood, and the man—­Frantz saw not whither he went—­perhaps up the chimney—­but go he certainly did.

The terrified young man leapt in a state of desperation from his bed, and searched the apartment narrowly, as people commonly, but foolishly, are wont to do in similar cases.  His search, as might have been expected, was 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.