ildren, too young for labor, continued to steal small articles exposed
in front of shops, as they had been taught.

In our intervals of leisure we decoyed travelers into our house and
buried the bodies in a cellar.

In one part of this cellar we kept wines, liquors and provisions. From
the rapidity of their disappearance we acquired the superstitious belief
that the spirits of the persons buried there came at dead of night and
held a festival. It was at least certain that frequently of a morning we
would discover fragments of pickled meats, canned goods and such debris,
littering the place, although it had been securely locked and barred
against human intrusion. It was proposed to remove the provisions and
store them elsewhere, but our dear mother, always generous and
hospitable, said it was better to endure the loss than risk exposure: if
the ghosts were denied this trifling gratification they might set on
foot an investigation, which would overthrow our scheme of the division
of labor, by diverting the energies of the whole family into the single
industry pursued by me--we might all decorate the cross-beams of
gibbets. We accepted her decision with filial submission, due to our
reverence for her wordly wisdom and the purity of her character.

One night while we were all in the cellar--none dared to enter it
alone--engaged in bestowing upon the Mayor of an adjoining town the
solemn offices of Christian burial, my mother and the younger children,
holding a candle each, while George Henry and I labored with a spade and
pick, my sister Mary Maria uttered a shriek and covered her eyes with
her hands. We were all dreadfully startled and the Mayor's obsequies
were instantly suspended, while with pale faces and in trembling tones
we begged her to say what had alarmed her. The younger children were so
agitated that they held their candles unsteadily, and the waving shadows
of our figures danced with uncouth and grotesque movements on the walls
and flung themselves into the most uncanny attitudes. The face of the
dead man, now gleaming ghastly in the light, and now extinguished by
some floating shadow, appeared at each emergence to have taken on a new
and more forbidding expression, a maligner menace. Frightened even more
than ourselves by the girl's scream, rats raced in multitudes about the
place, squeaking shrilly, or starred the black opacity of some distant
corner with steadfast eyes, mere points of green light, matching