"When my mother still was in her teens, she used sometimes to visit a widow whom she knew, and whose name was,--dear me, what was her name?--Madame,--yes, Madame Evensen, of course. She was a woman who had seen the best part of her life, but whether she lived up in Mill Street or down in the corner by the Little Church Hill, I cannot say for certain. Well, one Christmas Eve, just like to-night, she thought she would go to the morning service on the Christmas Day, for she was a great church-goer, and so she left out some coffee with the girl before she went to bed, that she might get a cup next morning,--she was sure a cup of warm coffee would do her a great deal of good at that early hour. When she woke, the moon was shining into the room; but when she got up to look at the clock she found it had stopped and that the fingers pointed to half-past eleven. She had no idea what time it could be, so she went to the window and looked across to the church. The light was streaming out through all the windows. She must have overslept herself! She called the girl and told her to get the coffee ready, while she dressed herself. So she took her hymn-book and started for church. The street was very quiet; she did not meet a single person on her way to church. When she went inside, she sat down in her customary seat in one of the pews, but when she looked around her she thought that the people were so pale and so strange,--exactly as if they were all dead. She did not know any of them, but there were several of them she seemed to recollect having seen before; but when and where she had seen them she could not call to mind. When the minister came into the pulpit, she saw that he was not one of the ministers in the town, but a tall, pale man, whose face, however, she thought she could recollect. He preached very nicely indeed, and there was not the usual noisy coughing and hawking which you always hear at the morning services on a Christmas Day; it was so quiet, you could have heard a needle drop on the floor,--in fact, it was so quiet she began to feel quite uneasy and uncomfortable. When the singing commenced again, a female who sat next to her leant towards her and whispered in her ear, 'Throw the cloak loosely around you and go, because if you wait here till the service is over they will make short work of you. It is the dead who are keeping service.'"