Dirck Bouts paintings

Dirck Bouts paintings
Dante Gabriel Rossetti paintings
Daniel Ridgway Knight paintings
Edmund Blair Leighton paintings
"Patience, friend," answered Herr Sesemann, "the one you have to sit up for will look a good deal worse when we have once caught him."
"So there is a sick person in the house, and one that has first to be caught?"
"Much worse than that, doctor! a ghost in the house! My house is haunted!"
The doctor laughed aloud.
"That's a nice way of showing sympathy, doctor!" continued Herr, Sesemann. "It's a pity my friend Rottenmeier cannot hear you. She is firmly convinced that some old member of the family is wandering
-173-about the house doing penance for some awful crime he committed."
"How did she become acquainted with him?" asked the doctor, still very much amused. So Herr Sesemann recounted to him how the front door was nightly opened by somebody, according to the testimony of the combined household, and he had therefore provided two loaded revolvers, so as to be prepared for anything that happened; for either the whole thing was a joke got up by some friend of the servants, just to alarm the household while he was away -- and in that case a pistol fired into the air would procure him a wholesome fright -- or else it was a thief, who, by leading everybody at first to think there was a ghost, made it safe for himself when he came later to steal, as no one would venture to run out if they heard him, and in that case too a good weapon would not be amiss.