"

"Hah! hum!" muttered Frantz, and a slight blush tinged his fine
countenance. "His children you say--"

"Lord, sir! I said nothing about them--who told you? Few folks at
Steingart, I guess, knew he had any but myself. 'Tis thought the poor
things did not come fairly by their ends; and for certain, I never buried
them!"

Frantz stood for some minutes absorbed in thought; at length he said--
"were they baptized? I have a reason for asking."

"Perhaps sir, it is, that you are thinking if the poor, little, innocent
creatures were not christened, they'd no right to be laid in consecrated
ground."

"No matter what I think; I believe I have the register."

"You have, sir; please then to look at page 197, line 19, and I fancy
you'll find the names of Gertrude and Erhard Dow, ('twas their poor
_misfortunate_ mother's sirname,) down as baptized."

"I have," interrupted Frantz, with an air of extreme solemnity, "seen, as
I believe, those children and their father!"

"Mein Gott!" cried the sexton in excessive alarm--"_seen_ them?--Seen
_Herr Von Weetzer!_ They do say he walks--dear, dear!--and after the
shocking unchristian death that he died too! Where, sir? Where and when?"

"No matter, I also have my suspicions."

"He murdered them himself, sir--the wicked man! 'Twasn't their mother, my
poor niece, God rest her soul! She died as easy as a lamb. Indeed, indeed,
it wasn't her."

"Bring your tools," said Frantz, "and come with me."

He led the sexton to his chamber--desired him to raise the mysterious
hearthstone, and dig up the ground beneath it. This was accordingly done,
and in a few minutes, with sentiments of unspeakable pity and horror,
Frantz beheld the fleshless remains of two children, who apparently from
the size of the bones must have been about the age and figure, when
deposited there, of the little phantoms. He found also upon turning to the
register, that it laid open at the very page named by the sexton; and on
the very spot which the apparition of the wretched Von Weetzer had
indicated by his finger, was duly entered the baptism of the murdered
children; and the sexton readily turned to the entries of their birth in
other parts of the volume. Frantz interred the remains of these
unfortunate beings in consecrated ground--immediately quitted Steingart--
resigned a preferment which had (from the singularly terrible incident
thus connected with his possession of it) equally alarmed and disgusted
him--_m