soul would have been safe, and his body buried in
consecrated ground. My husband went to the Rector and told his
Reverence that Hans had renounced his errors, and had made a full
profession of the Catholic faith to him; but his Reverence shook his
head, and said that was not the same thing as if Padre Michele had
received Hans into the true fold. Then my husband said it was a pity
Hans should suffer because the Padre had been out of the way; but his
Reverence always answered, 'No,' and so 'No' it was. The clergy were
not to attend, and the body was to be put into the ground just as you
might bury a dog. What could my husband do more? So he went his way
to his patients. It happened that he had to see several, far in the
country, and so did not come home till late at night.

"You all know the tower which stands upon the green knoll high above
the town. It is a relic of very old times, when San Cipriano had
fortifications. It has been a ruin for more than a century,--a mere
shell, open to the sky, encircling a wide space of ground. A few days
before Hans's death, the Doctor had taken it into his head he would
like to hire this tower of the municipality, to which it belongs, to
make a garden within its walls. He had been to examine the place a
week previous, and had brought home the key of the gate, being
determined to take it. Now this very day after Hans died, and while my
husband was away on his round of country visits, the Syndic sent to
ask for the key, and I, thinking no harm, gave it. And now what do you
think the Syndic wanted the key for? Just to dig a hole for poor
Hans. Yes, the body was carried up there, and buried out of sight as
quickly as possible.

"When the Doctor came home he was in a mighty passion with
everybody;--with the Rector, for refusing Hans a place in the
burial-ground; with the Syndic, for allowing the tower to be used for
such a purpose; and most of all with me, for giving the key without
asking why or wherefore.

"However, what was done could not be undone, and so no more was said
about the matter. It might have been a week after, when some girls who
had set out before daylight to go to the wood for leaves, came back
much terrified, declaring they had seen an apparition on the tower
wall. Not one had dared to go on to the wood, but all ran back to the
town and spread the alarm. A dozen persons, at least, came to our
house to tell us about it, and I promise you my husband did not call
it a