aughed and
coaxed her again.

So the woman said determinedly: "It is enough. I will die!"

With these words she opened her chest of clothes, put on new garments,
and painted her face before the mirror. Then she drew up a bench and
climbed up on it. She undid her girdle and knotted it to the beam. She
had already stretched forth her neck and was about to leap from the
bench, when the child suddenly awoke and began to cry. The woman
climbed down again and soothed and quieted her child, and while she
was petting it she wept, so that the tears fell from her eyes like a
string of pearls. The ghost frowned and hissed, for it feared to lose
its prey. In a short time the child had fallen asleep again, and the
woman once more began to look aloft. Then she rose, again climbed on
the bench, and was about to lay the noose about her neck when the
soldier began to call out loudly and drum on the window-pane. Then he
broke it and climbed into the room. The woman fell to the ground and
the ghost disappeared. The soldier recalled the woman to
consciousness, and then he saw something hanging down from the beam,
like a cord without an end. Knowing that it belonged to the ghost of
the hanged woman he took and kept it.

Then he said to the woman: "Take good care of your child! You have
but one life to lose in this world!"

And with that he went out.

Then it occurred to him that his horse and his baggage were still in
the temple. And he went there to get them. When he came out of the
village there was the ghost, waiting for him in the road.

The ghost bowed and said: "I have been looking for a substitute for
many years, and to-day, when it seemed as though I should really get
one, you came along and spoiled my chances. So there is nothing more
for me to do. Yet there is something which I left behind me in my
hurry. You surely must have found it, and I will ask you to return it
to me. If I only have this one thing, my not having found a substitute
will not worry me."

Then the soldier showed her the rope and said with a laugh: "Is this
the thing you mean? Why, if I were to give it back to you then some
one is sure to hang themselves. And that I could not allow."

With these words he wound the rope around his arm, drove her off and
said: "Now be off with you!"

But then the ghost grew angry. Her face turned greenish-black, her
hair fell in wild disorder down her neck, her eyes grew bloodshot, and
her tongue hung far out of her mou