t will
be a good discipline for the youth." And so the sexton took him into his
house, and his duty was to toll the bell. After a few days he woke him
at midnight, and bade him rise and climb into the tower and toll.
"Now, my friend, I'll teach you to shudder," thought he. He stole forth
secretly in front, and when the youth was up above, and had turned
round to grasp the bell-rope, he saw, standing opposite the hole of the
belfry, a white figure. "Who's there?" he called out, but the figure
gave no answer, and neither stirred nor moved. "Answer," cried the
youth, "or begone; you have no business here at this hour of the night."
But the sexton remained motionless, so that the youth might think that
it was a ghost. The youth called out the second time: "What do you want
here? Speak if you are an honest fellow, or I'll knock you down the
stairs." The sexton thought: "He can't mean that in earnest," so gave
forth no sound, and stood as though he were made of stone. Then the
youth shouted out to him the third time, and as that too had no effect,
he made a dash at the spectre and knocked it down the stairs, so that it
fell about ten steps and remained lying in a corner. Thereupon he tolled
the bell, went home to bed without saying a word, and fell asleep. The
sexton's wife waited a long time for her husband, but he never appeared.
At last she became anxious, and woke the youth, and asked: "Don't you
know where my husband is? He went up to the tower in front of you."
"No," answered the youth; "but someone stood on the stairs up there just
opposite the trap-door in the belfry, and because he wouldn't answer me,
or go away, I took him for a rogue and knocked him down. You'd better go
and see if it was he; I should be much distressed if it were." The wife
ran and found her husband who was lying groaning in a corner, with his
leg broken.

She carried him down, and then hurried with loud protestations to the
youth's father. "Your son has been the cause of a pretty misfortune,"
she cried; "he threw my husband downstairs so that he broke his leg.
Take the good-for-nothing wretch out of our house." The father was
horrified, hurried to the youth, and gave him a scolding.

"What unholy pranks are these? The evil one must have put them into your
head." "Father," he replied, "only listen to me; I am quite guiltless.
He stood there in the night, like one who meant harm. I didn't know who
it was, and warned him three times to speak or beg