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However, all this is aside from Gottlieb’s horrified looks as he waked from his troubled slumbers–looks which would disappear as he became thoroughly aroused, but only to return again after his next uneasy nap. One day he startled Aunt Hedwig by asking her if she believed in ghosts. Remembering his severe words in condemnation of her casual reference to these supernatural beings, it was with some hesitation that she replied that she did. Still more to her surprise, Gottlieb turned away from her hurriedly, yet not so hurriedly but that she saw a strange, scared look upon his face, and in a low and trembling voice replied: “And so do I!”

And now the fact may as well be admitted frankly that a ghost was the disturbing element that was making Gottlieb’s life go wrong; that, as there seemed to be every reason to believe, was hurrying him towards the grave: for a middle-aged German who refuses to eat, whose regular sleep forsakes him, and who actually gives up smoking, naturally cannot be expected to remain long in this world.

It was the ghost of his dead wife. At first she appeared to him only in his dreams, standing beside the desk in which he had placed the stolen recipe for making lebkuchen, and holding down the lid of that desk with a firm but diaphanous white hand. Presently she appeared to him quite as clearly in his waking hours. Her face still wore an expression at once tender and reproachful; but every day the look of tenderness diminished, while the look of reproach grew stronger and more stern. Each time that he sought to open the desk that he might take thence the recipe and make his crime a practical business success, the figure assumed an air so terribly menacing that his heart failed him, and he gave over the attempt.

This, then, was the all-sufficient reason why the good lebkuchen that would have proved Gottlieb a thief was not for sale at the Cafe Nuerenburg; and this was the reason why Gottlieb himself, broken down by loss of food and sleep and by the nervous wear and tear incident to forced companionship with an angry ghost, was drawing each day nearer and nearer to that dark portal through which bakers and all other people pass hence into the shadowy region whence there is no return.

Gottlieb Brekel never had been an especially pious man. As became a reputable German citizen, he had paid regularly the rent of a pew in the Church of the Redemptorist Fathers in Third Street; but, excepting on such high feasts as Christmas and Easter, he usually had been content to occupy it and to discharge his religious duties at large vicariously. Aunt Hed-wig’s bonnet invariably was the most brilliantly conspicuous feature of the entire congregation, just as the prettiest face in the entire congregation invariably was Minna’s. But now that Gottlieb was confronted with a spiritual difficulty, it occurred to him that he might advantageously resort in his extremity to spiritual aid. He had no very clear notion how the aid would be given; he was not even clear as to how he ought to set about asking for it; and he was troubled by the conviction that in order to obtain it he must not only repent of his sin, but must make atonement by restitution–a possibility (for the devil still had a good grip upon him) that made him hesitate a long while before he set about purchasing ease for his conscience at so heavy a material cost. However, his good angel at last managed to pluck up some courage–it was high time–and, strengthened by this tardily given assistance, he betook himself in search of consolation within church walls.

The Church of the Redemptorist Fathers is a very beautiful church, and at all times–save through the watches of the night and through one mid-day hour–its doors stand hospitably open, silently inviting poor sinners, weary and heavy laden with their sins, to enter into the calm of its quiet holiness and there find rest. Tall, slender pillars uphold its vaulted roof, in the groinings of which lurk mysterious shadows. Below, a warm, rich light comes through the stained-glass windows: whereon are pictured the blessed St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, founder of the Redemptorist Congregation, blessedly instructing the chubby-faced choristers; and the Venerable Clement Hofbauer, “primus in Germania” of the Redemptorists, all in his black gown, kneeling, praying no doubt for the outcast German souls for the saving of which he worked so hard and so well; and (a picture that Minna dearly loved) St. Joseph and the sweet Virgin and the little Christ-child fleeing together through the desert from the wrath of the Judean king. And ranged around the walls on perches high aloft are statues of various minor saints and of the Twelve Apostles; of which Minna’s favorite was the Apostle Matthias, because this saint, with his high forehead tending towards baldness, and his long gray beard and gray hair, and his kindly face, and even the axe in his hand (that was not unlike a baker’s peel), made her think always of her dear father. The pew that Gottlieb paid for so regularly, and so irregularly occupied, was just beneath the statue of this saint; which, however, gave Minna less pleasure than would have been hers had not the next saint in the row been the Apostle Simon with his dreadful saw. It must have hurt so horribly to be sawed in two, she thought. In the dusky depths of the great chancel gleamed the white marble of the beautiful altar, guarded by St. Peter with his keys and St. Paul with his naked two-edged sword; and above the altar was the dead Christ on Calvary, with His desolate mother and the despairing Magdalene and St. John the divine.