led in a
brawl. The girl did not know it, and the young man's ghost continued to
visit her as usual, and she began to grow pale and thin. The father
discovered the state of the case, and consulted the priest, who learned
from the girl, in confession, how matters stood, and came with a black
cat, a stole, and book, to conjure the spirit and save the girl.

The fifth legend is entitled: "The Night of the Dead"; _i. e._ the eve
of All Saints' Day. A servant girl, rising early one morning as she
supposed (it was really midnight), witnesses a weird procession, which
she unwittingly disturbs by lowering her candle and asking the last
passer-by to light it. This he does; but when she pulls up her basket
she finds in it, besides the lighted candle, a human arm. Her confessor
tells her to wait a year, until the procession passes again, then hold a
black cat tightly in her arms, and restore the arm to its owner. This
she does, with the words: "Here, master, take your arm; I am much
obliged to you." He took the arm angrily, and said: "You may thank God
you have that cat in your arms; otherwise, what I am, that you would be
also."

The sixth legend is of an incredulous priest, who believes that where
the dead are, there they stay. It is as follows:

LXX. THE PARISH PRIEST OF SAN MARCUOLA.

Once upon a time there was a parish priest at San Marcuola, here in
Venice, who was a very good man. He couldn't bear to see women in church
with hats or bonnets on their heads, and he had spirit enough to go and
make them take them off. "For," said he, "the church is the house of
God; and what is not permitted to men ought not to be permitted to
women." But when a woman had a shawl over her shoulders he would have
her throw it over her head, that she might not be stared at and ogled.
But this priest had one fault: he did not believe in ghosts; and one
day he was preaching a sermon, and in this sermon he said to the people:
"Listen, now, dearly beloved brethren. This morning, when I came into
the church here, there comes up to me one of my flock, and she says to
me, all in a flutter: 'Oh, Father, what a fright I have had this night!
I was asleep in my bed, and the ghosts came and twitched away my
coverlet!' But I answered her: 'Dear daughter, that is not possible;
because _where the dead are, there they stay_.'" And so he declared
before all the congregation that it was not true that the dead could
come back and be seen and heard. In the ev