In China they are more practical. In the natural course of things the spirit of an engaged girl would certainly haunt her lover, but there is a way to prevent it, and that way he takes. He must go to the house where she died, step over the coffin containing her body, and carry home a pair of her shoes. Then he is safe. A story may be added which comes from a Dutch source. The gravedigger happened to have a fever on All Saints' Day. "Is it not unlucky?" he said to a friend who came to see him, "I am ill, and must go to-night in the cold and snow to dig a grave." "Oh, I'll do that for you," said the gossip. "That's a little service." So it was agreed. The gossip took a spade and a pick-axe, and cheered himself with a glass at the alehouse; then, by half-past eleven, the work was done. As he was going away from the churchyard he saw a procession of white friars--they went round the close, each with a taper in his hand. When they passed the gossip, they threw down the tapers, and the last flung him a big ball of wax with two wicks. The gossip laughed quite loudly: all this wax would sell for a pretty sum! He picked up the tapers and hid them under his bed. Next day was All Souls'. The gossip went to bed betimes, but he could not get to sleep, and as twelve struck he heard three knocks. He jumped up and opened the door--there stood all the white monks, only they had no tapers! The gossip fell back on his bed from fright, and the monks marched into the room and stood all round him. Then their white robes dropped off, and, only to think of it! they were all skeletons! But no skeleton was complete; one lacked an arm, another a leg, another a backbone, and one had no head. Somehow the cloth in which the gossip had wrapped the wax came out from under the bed and fell open; instead of tapers it was full of bones. The skeletons now called out for their missing members: "Give me my rib," "Give me my backbone," and so on. The gossip gave back all the pieces, and put the skull on the right shoulders--it was what he had mistaken for a ball of wax. The moment the owner of the head had got it back he snatched a violin which was hanging against the wall, and told the gossip to begin to play forthwith, he himself extending his arms in the right position to conduct the music. All the skeletons danced, making a fearful clatter, and the gossip dared not leave off fiddling till the morning came and the monks put on their clothes and went away. The gossip and his wife did not say one word of what had happened till their last hour, when they thought it wisest to tell their confessor.