"Be still, will you!" commanded the voice from the calash, rather faintly. "You know I meant no harm; it is only because I am so wretched in this dog's life of a professional ghost, and besides that, this confounded love affair, and no rest at night--" "Yes, indeed, I can well believe it!" sighed the other, easily pacified. "You are even worse off than I, and not so much as a kiss will all this bring you. It would be a good thing if you would put the girl out of your mind. It's all nonsense, anyway." A heavy sigh came from the black depths of the wagon frame. "That you don't understand, I observe. When this maiden, decked with all heavenly charms, crosses my path, I am like a poor moth that cannot keep away from the lamp, although it does not go near it with the exact intention of burning its wings. I often think the priests' invention is not the real hell--as indeed we know; the true one is the suffering which we incur by our earthly sins. More than one little goose of a girl has cried her eyes out over me; a confoundedly handsome fellow I was, with a pocketful of money. Then, out of sight was out of mind with me; but now I am in for it. What I endure is heart-breaking. There is no drinking to the oblivion of this soul-suffering." He was silent, exhausted by this passionate outburst; and only a slight whimper was audible from the corner. His sympathetic comrade had in the meantime withdrawn to his chest. After a little, he said: "How beautifully you express it all, Herr Müller! Just so it goes with my Rieka. In my lifetime I laughed when I heard them talk of everlasting love. But there is something in it, after all. Now, if your Gundelchen and my Rieka should come to us up yonder, perhaps we might continue our courting. Perhaps, upon the last day--well, we must wait. In the meantime, good-night! pleasant dreams!" From the carriage in the corner came no answer--only a soft, ghost-like snore. Grief seemed at last to have left the poor sinners to their rest. But the sleep of the two much-enduring ghosts was to be broken in upon in a strange way that night. In a little cafe by the market place two good friends and school-fellows were celebrating their _Wiedersehen_ with several bottles of Rhine wine. The one, a dignified young man of four-and-twenty, had just returned from a neighboring university, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Before accepting the proffered position of assistant in the office of a distinguished physician, he contemplated a year of travel. Following the promptings of his heart, he visited first his native town; though all ties of kindred there had been broken by the death of his parents.