The Stolen Farthings

Once a father was sitting at the table with his wife and children at noon, and a good friend who had come to visit was eating with them. And as they sat there, and the clock struck twelve, the stranger saw the door open and a very pale little child dressed in snow-white come in. It didn't look around and didn't say anything either, but went straight into the room next door. Soon after it came back and just as quietly went out of the door again. The second day and the third day it came the same way. Then finally the stranger asked the father who owned the beautiful child that went into the room every noon. "I did not see it," he replied, "nor do I know whose it could be." The next day, when it came again, the stranger showed it to the father, but he did not see it, nor the mother and the children none of them saw anything either. Now the stranger got up, went to the chamber door, opened it a little and looked in. Then he saw the child sitting on the ground and busy digging and digging in the floorboard cracks with his fingers; but when it noticed the stranger, it disappeared. Now he told what he had seen and described the child in detail, when the mother recognized it and said, "Oh, that's my dear child who died four weeks ago." They broke open the floorboards and found two pennies that had once received the child from the mother to give to a poor man, but thought, "You can buy a rusk for this," kept the pennies and hid them in the floorboard cracks; and there it had had no rest in the grave, and had come every midday to look for the pennies. The parents then gave the money to a poor man, and the child was never seen again afterwards.