No answer. A cold perspiration covered his body, his teeth chattered, his eyes were distended, as he tried to pierce the darkness. Suddenly it seemed to him that his door opened. He had no strength to cry out, but waited more dead than alive. An icy wind penetrated the room, agitated the curtains and swept across the face of Dewis. Sighs and sobs commenced. What was it? Had it a form, a body? Was it a human being? Dewis knew not, although he heard only too well the groans and sobs and believed he distinguished steps, but he saw nothing, heard not a word, not a syllable. Nevertheless the strange intruder, the spirit or ghost, continued to moan. It advanced towards the bed, approached so near that the sobs sounded almost in the ear of the terrified basket maker. Then slowly it departed. Dewis heard it go out by another door beside his bed and enter an adjoining room, where it continued to lament. "Now what was this? An apparition, a specter, or simply the effect of an hallucination?" he asked himself. Again he heard the same noises as before. This time they resounded above him in the attic, then ceased, and at last the house became silent. It will be superfluous to say that after the departure of his frightful guest, he was in a pitiable state. He did not dare to rise, and he could not sleep. The rising sun found him terrified and overcome. As to his wife, she had immediately after the first noise gone to sleep again. When her husband related to her what he had heard she appeared incredulous, and did all in her power to soothe and quiet him. She succeeded in partly convincing him that what he believed to have heard was the result of tired and excited nerves. But when the following night at the same hour the groans recommenced, he had the presence of mind to awaken her. They both listened attentively. Like the preceding night, the same sighs and sobs were heard, first softly, then they seemed to enter the chamber, going out at the second door and finishing in the attic. This time there was no doubting that the apparition was real. What was to be done? The basket maker was a member of the society instituted at the cathedral to perform rites for the repose of souls, which gave him the privilege of joining in the processions, covered with a mantle of black silk. He had ever been animated with the laudable desire of delivering souls from purgatory, and did not for a single instant doubt that this was some poor soul in trouble, who had come to recommend himself to his powerful intervention. But whose soul was this, and what body had it animated in this world? The soul of Lyntje? That could not be. They prayed every day for her, and had resolved to use no more milk, for the repose of the soul of this very regretted friend.