‘Good heavens! what a fool my brother is; he will never do any good as long as he lives.’
But his Father sighed, and answered: ‘You will easily enough learn how to shudder, but you won’t make your bread by it?’
Soon after, the Sexton came to the house on a visit, and the Father confided his troubles about his son to him. He told him how stupid he was, and how he never could learn anything. ‘Would you believe that when I asked him how he was going to make his living, he said he would like to learn how to shudder?’
‘If that’s all,’ said the Sexton, ‘he may learn that from me. Just let me have him, and I ’ll soon put the polish on him.’
The Father was pleased, for he thought: ‘Anyhow, the Lad will gain something by it.’
So the Sexton took him home with him, and he had to ring the church bells.
A few days after, the Sexton woke him at midnight, and told him to get up and ring the bells. ‘ You shall soon be taught how to shudder!’ he thought, as he crept stealthily up the stairs beforehand.
When the Lad got up into the tower, and turned round to catch hold of the bell rope, he saw a white figure standing on the steps opposite the belfry window.
‘Who is there?’ he cried; but the figure neither moved nor answered.
‘Answer,’ cried the Lad, ‘or get out of the way. You have no business here in the night.’
But so that the Lad should think he was a ghost, the Sexton did not stir.
The Lad cried for the second time: ‘What do you want here? Speak if you are an honest fellow, or I ‘ll throw you down the stairs.’
The Sexton did not think he would go to such lengths, so he made no sound, and stood as still as if he were made of stone.
Then the Lad called to him the third time, and, as he had