I did not tell the schoolgirls that I myself saw the figure, and tried to laugh them out of a "silly fancy," as I called it, fearing that I might be called upon as a witness, should this report reach the ears of the school-mistress, and it might prejudice folks against my friend as a teacher, so I affected harshness, and said I begged I should hear no more of such stuff, and the affair dropped for the time; but now that the double had recommenced its visits, it came frequently, and always in class time, to my friend's great discomfiture. Of course, there was no getting out of it now. The school-mistress was called, and saw the same thing; and I myself was obliged to see it with the rest. The school-mistress was very much bewildered, as well she might be. She declared she did not know what to make of it. She could hardly bring herself to think that it was a messenger of good, and Miss Falkland's character was so unimpeachable that she could still less believe that anything bad should be permitted to torment her. In fact, she did not know what to think, so she called for the rector of the parish, that he might speak with the apparition; and if it should prove an evil one, to exorcise it. The rector came, but being disappointed in seeing the spectre, came a second, third, and fourth time, with the like success, till at length he went away in a huff, and begged they would trouble him no more. One Sunday, however, as the rector was in the middle of his sermon, his eyes being fixed on our school, we noticed him suddenly turn pale and tremble. He was unable to go on with his sermon. I followed his eyes, and found, as I half expected, my friend and her double seated close together. The girls shrieked and started, and a commotion was being made in the church; so much so, that Claribel was obliged to get up and walk out, her double following close at her heels. Fancy poor Claribel, who was like a nun in her love of solitude and retirement, having to walk out of church through a crowd of people all the way home again with a duplicate of herself following in her footsteps! You must not suppose that the matter stopped here. The remarks of the rustics who met her on the way, the village gossip that now broke out afresh--worse than ever before--the suspicious looks she received on all sides, all contributed to mortify her; but what appeared to completely break her spirit was the sudden falling off of one half of her pupils. Of course, she could make no doubt as to the cause of this. Even the rest of the pupils, she thought, grew colder to her, and they, too, dropped off one by one, until the poor girl had not a single pupil left.