THE WHITE SOUL.1

THE WHITE SOUL.1

The first night after she came the wife suddenly woke up the husband, saying:—

‘What is it that kneels at the foot of the bed? surely it is a white soul.’

‘I see nothing,’ said the husband; ‘go to sleep!’

The wife said no more, but the next night it was the same thing, and the next, and the next; and she described so sincerely what she saw, and with so much earnestness, that the husband could have no doubt that what she said was true. And as he saw it disturbed her rest, and made her ill, he said:—

‘If it comes again, to-night, we will conjure it.’

That night, again, the wife woke him with a start—

‘There it is,’ she said, ‘the white soul; it kneels at the foot of the bed.’

The husband said nothing, but following the direction of his wife’s hand, he solemnly bid the apparition depart, in the name of the Most Holy Trinity and the Madonna.

The husband and wife thought a good deal of what they had heard; they had never known before of the father’s intimacy with this woman, but they inquired, and found it was even so.

There was a ruler in the chest of drawers in the bedroom, and all through the night there were knocks; now on the ceiling, now on the floor, now on the walls, as if given with that ruler, and we know those ‘spiritismo’ people say the spirits make themselves understood by knocking.

After that, they sent away their boarder, though at considerable pecuniary loss.

[‘I know a story like that,’ said the first man, ‘and a true one too; it happened in 1848 or 1849.’]