side of the lumber-room which opened into the house he occupied, and that he had lately been using this empty place as a cellar for his firewood; but he readily promised to have it cleared out as speedily as possible, and to have the entrance into his own house stopped up. "Yet," he added, in a very gracious manner, "it is hardly necessary to have any separation between the two houses, when I have such respectable and agreeable neighbours as yourselves."
"What made you look so crossly at that excellent Mr. Stork, Johanna?" asked her husband, when their visitor was gone. "I am sure he is kindness itself. He cannot really help that he has that unfortunate contortion of the mouth, which gives a peculiar expression to his countenance."
"I sincerely wish we had some other person as our neighbour, and had nothing to do with him!" exclaimed Johanna; "I do not feel safe with such a man near us."
Frants now worked with equal diligence and pleasure, and often remained until a late hour in the workshop, especially if he had any order to finish. He preferred cabinet-making to the more common branches of his trade, and was always delighted when he had any pretty piece of furniture to construct from one of the finer sorts of wood. But he was best known as a coffin-maker, and necessity compelled him to undertake more of this gloomy kind of work than he liked. Often, when he was finishing a coffin, he would reflect upon all the sorrow, and perhaps calamity, which the work that provided him and his with bread would bring into the house into which it was destined to enter. And when he met people in high health and spirits on the public promenades, he frequently sighed to think how soon he might be engaged in nailing together the last earthly resting-places of these animated forms.
One night he was so much occupied in finishing a large coffin, that he did not remark how late it had become, until he heard the watchman call out "Twelve."
At that moment he fancied he heard a hollow voice behind him say, "Still hammering! and for whom is that coffin?" He started, dropped the hammer from his hand, and looked round in terror, but no one was to be seen." It is the old gloomy thoughts creeping back into my mind and affecting my brain, now, at this ghostly hour of midnight," said he; but he put away the hammer and nails, and took up his light to go to his bedroom. Before he reached the door of the workshop, however, the candle, which had burned down very low, quite in the socket of the candlestick, suddenly went out. He was left in the dark, and in vain he groped about to find the door; at any other time he would have laughed at the circumstance, but now, it rather added to his annoyance that three times he found himself at the door of the lumber-room instead of getting hold of the one which opened into his house. The third time he came to it he stopped and listened, for he fancied he heard something moving within the empty room; a light also glimmered through a chink in the door, which was fastened; and on listening more attentively he thought he distinctly heard a sound as of buckets of water being dashed over the floor, and some one scrubbing it with a brush. "It is an odd time to scour the floor," he thought; and then knocking at the door, and raising his voice, he called out loudly to ask who was there, and what they were
