The invisible intruders, as they passed into the room where the dead man lay, put out all the candles. At last the same sound of footsteps could be heard departing from the house, and as this mysterious sound passed out through the room, people heard the bustle, and even felt the crush, and on leaving, the strange visitors re-lighted the candles, but nothing was to be seen, but the sound of horses' feet was heard as if a large concourse of cavaliers were driving away from the house, in the same manner as they had approached it, and gradually the sound died away. Then the relatives and friends and others who were present at the 'gwylnos,' keeping vigil over the dead, were anxious to know what this sound of invisible footsteps meant, and what had happened, so they entered the room where the coffin was, and when they opened it, to their great alarm, they found that nothing but an empty coffin, for the corpse was gone, and was never found again. The people of the neighbourhood really believed that the body was taken by the Devil, or evil spirits, as the man had lived such a bad life. The coffin was afterwards filled with stones and buried. Another strange old death custom, if it ever existed, was the "Sin Eater." It seems that the first to refer to the subject was Mr. John Aubrey, in 1686, who asserted that there was such a custom in Herefordshire and also in North Wales, and at the annual meeting of the Cambrian Archæological Association, which was held at Ludlow in August, 1852, Mr. Matthew Moggridge, of Swansea, made the following observation:--"When a person died, his friends sent for the Sin-eater of the district, who, on his arrival, placed a plate of salt on the breast of the defunct, and upon the salt a piece of bread. He then muttered an incantation over the bread, which he finally ate, thereby eating up all the sins of the deceased. This done, he received his fee of 2s. 6d. and vanished as quickly as possible from the general gaze; for, as it was believed that he really appropriated to his own use and behoof the sins of all those over whom he performed the above ceremony. He was utterly detested in the neighbourhood--regarded as a mere Pariah--as one irredeemably lost." The speaker then mentioned the Parish of Llandebie, in Carmarthenshire, where the above practice was said to have prevailed to a recent period. Mr. Allen, of Pembrokeshire, said that the plate and salt were known in that county, where also a lighted candle was stuck in the salt, and that the popular notion was that it kept away the evil spirit.