That same night, much later, she woke to find him lying peacefully by her side in bed, with one arm stretched out towards her, _dead_. Her story was half believed, half doubted at the time, but in a very few years afterwards it evidently came to be accepted by all the countryside. A funeral service was held to which the people flocked in great numbers, and everyone approved of the sentiment which led the widow to add the words, "The Father of the Village," after the usual texts which appeared upon the stone over his grave. This, then, was the story I pieced together of the village ghost as the little inn-keeper's daughter told it to me that afternoon in the parlour of the inn. "But you're not the first to say you've seen him," the girl concluded; "and your description is just what we've always heard, and that window, they say, was just where he used to sit and think, and think, when he was alive, and sometimes, they say, to cry for hours together." "And would you feel afraid if you had seen him?" I asked, for the girl seemed strangely moved and interested in the whole story. "I think so," she answered timidly. "Surely, if he spoke to me. He did speak to _you_, didn't he, sir?" she asked after a slight pause. "He said he had come for someone." "Come for someone," she repeated. "Did he say--" she went on falteringly. "No, he did not say for whom," I said quickly, noticing the sudden shadow on her face and the tremulous voice. "Are you really sure, sir?" "Oh, quite sure," I answered cheerfully. "I did not even ask him." The girl looked at me steadily for nearly a whole minute as though there were many things she wished to tell me or to ask. But she said nothing, and presently picked up her tray from the table and walked slowly out of the room. Instead of keeping to my original purpose and pushing on to the next village over the hills, I ordered a room to be prepared for me at the inn, and that afternoon I spent wandering about the fields and lying under the fruit trees, watching the white clouds sailing out over the sea. The Wood of the Dead I surveyed from a distance, but in the village I visited the stone erected to the memory of the "Father of the Village"--who was thus, evidently, no mythical personage--and saw also the monuments of his fine unselfish spirit: the schoolhouse he built, the library, the home for the aged poor, and the tiny hospital.