These visitors were shown through all the various departments of charity, and left their offerings in each before they went away.

“I do wish one thing,” said little Sister Felecitie, as she lingered near Salome, after the departure of the visitors.

“What do you wish, dear?” inquired the latter.

“Why, then, that the good people who give to our poor, whatever else they give, would always give the children dolls and the old people tobacco.  The children never can have too many dolls, nor the old people enough tobacco.”

“But is not the use of tobacco a vicious habit?”

“I hope not.  It makes the poor old souls so happy.”

CHAPTER XXX.

THE HAUNTER.

The vesper bell called them to the chapel, and the conversation ceased.

Salome joined the procession and entered the choir.

As soon as she had taken her seat she looked through the screen upon the congregation assembled in the public part of the church.  A great dread seized her that she should see again the man whose presence had so disturbed her in the morning.

Heaven! he was there!—­not where he sat before, but in one of the end pews, facing the choir, so that she had a full view of his ghastly face and glassy eyes.

A sudden superstitious fear fell upon her.  She almost thought the figure was his ghost, or was some optical illusion conjured up by her own imagination.

She wished to test its reality by the eyes of another.  She wished to whisper to the abbess, and point him out, and ask her if she, too, saw him; but she dared not do this.  The vesper hymn was pealing forth from the choir, and all the sisterhood, except herself, were singing.

She was their soprano, and she had to join them.  She began first in a tremulous voice, but soon the spell of the music took hold of her, and carried her away, far, far above all earthly thoughts and cares, and she sang, as her hearers afterward declared, “like a seraph.”

At the end of the service she whispered to the abbess, calling her attention to the pallid stranger in the end pew; but when both turned to look, the man had vanished!

“Mother, I do not know whether that ghostly figure was a real man, after all!” whispered Salome, in an awe-stricken tone.

“My good child, what do you mean?” inquired the abbess, uneasily.

“Mother, I feel as if I were haunted!” said Salome, with a shudder.

“Come! your nerves have been overtasked.  You must have a composing draught, and go to bed,” said the superior, decisively.

“It may be that I am nervous and excitable, and that I have conjured up this image in my brain—­such a ghastly, ghostly image, mother!  It could not have been real, though I thought nothing else this morning than that it was real.  But this evening—­oh! madam, if you had seen it, with its blanched face and glazed eyes, like a sceptre risen from the grave!”