te
the funeral of my only son with the same expense as if he had been
full grown, and to the feast I invite both Toenne and you. By that
you may know that I bear you no grudge."

So Toenne and Jofrid went to the funeral banquet. They were well
treated, and no one said anything unfriendly to them. The women who
had dressed the child's body had related that it had been miserably
thin and had borne marks of great neglect. But that could easily
come from sickness. No one wished to believe anything bad about the
foster-parents, for it was known that they were good people.

Jofrid wept a great deal during those days, especially when she
heard the women tell how they had to wake and toil for their little
children. She noticed, too, that the women at the funeral were
continually talking of their children. Some rejoiced so in them
that they never could stop telling of their questions and games.
Jofrid would have liked to have talked about Toenne, but most of
them never spoke of their husbands.

Late one evening Jofrid and Toenne came home from the festivities.
They went straight to bed. But hardly had they fallen asleep before
they were waked by a feeble crying. "It is the child," they
thought, still half asleep, and were angry at being disturbed. But
suddenly both of them sat right up in the bed. The child was dead.
Where did that crying come from? When they were quite awake, they
heard nothing, but as soon as they began to drop off to sleep they
heard it. Little, tottering feet sounded on the stone threshold
outside the house, a little hand groped for the door, and when it
could not open it, the child crept crying and feeling along the
wall, until it stopped just outside where they were sleeping. As
soon as they spoke or sat up, they perceived nothing; but when they
tried to sleep, they distinctly heard the uncertain steps and the
suppressed sobbings.

That which they had not wished to believe, but which seemed a
possibility during these last days, now became a certainty. They
felt that they had killed the child. Why otherwise should it have
the power to haunt them?

From that night all happiness left them. They lived in constant
fear of the ghost. By day they had some peace, but at night they
were so disturbed by the child's weeping and choking sobs, that
they did not dare to sleep alone. Jofrid often went long distances
to get some one to stop over night in their house. If there was any
stranger there, it was quiet,