A man, visiting a friend and his family, sees the
ghost of his friend’s child who died a month ago. The lost child is
looking for two pennies she was supposed to have given to a poor
man.
STOLEN PENNIES
A FATHER was one day sitting at dinner with his wife and his
children, and a good friend who had come on a visit was with
them. And as they thus sat, and it was striking twelve o’clock, the
stranger saw the door open, and a very pale child dressed in snowwhite
clothes came in. It did not look around, and it did not speak,
but went straight into the next room. Soon afterwards it came back,
and went out at the door again in the same quiet manner. On the
second and on the third day, it came also exactly in the same way.
At last the stranger asked the father to whom the beautiful child
that went into the next room every day at noon belonged? “I have
never seen it,” said he, neither did he know to whom it could
belong. The next day when it again came, the stranger pointed it
out to the father, who however did not see it, and the mother and
the children also all saw nothing.
At this the stranger got up, went to the room door, opened it a
little, and peeped in. Then he saw the child sitting on the ground,
and digging and seeking about industriously among the crevices
between the boards of the floor, but when it saw the stranger, it
disappeared. He now told what he had seen and described the
child exactly, and the mother recognized it, and said, “Ah, it is my
dear child who died a month ago.” They took up the boards and
found two pennies which the child had once received from its
mother that it might give them to a poor man. It, however, had
thought, “I can buy myself a biscuit for that,” and had kept the
pennies, and hid-den them in the openings between the boards.
2
Therefore it had had no rest in its grave, and had come every day
at noon to seek for these pennies. The parents gave the money at
once to a poor man, and after that the child was never seen again.