The Concealed Geller

Once a husband and wife with their children were sitting at the dinner table, and at that same table sat their friend, who had come visiting and was dining with them. And while they were sitting at the table, the clock struck noon, and suddenly the guest saw the door open and a pale little child enter the room, dressed in clothing white as snow.

He did not look around nor say anything to anyone, but went straight into the next room.

Soon afterward he returned, just as quietly passed through the room, and exited through the same door.

On the second and on the third day the same thing happened. Then at last the guest asked the father: "Whose child is this that every day at noon passes through the room?"—"I have not seen him, and could not say whose child this is."

On the following day, when the child appeared again, the guest pointed him out to both the father and the mother; but neither they nor their children saw anything.

Then the guest rose, slightly opened the door to the next room, and peered inside.

There he saw that the very same child was sitting on the floor and diligently digging with his little finger in the cracks between the floorboards; but noticing a stranger, the child vanished.

So the guest told everything he had seen and described the child in detail; then the mother recognized him by these signs and said: "Ah, this is my dear little child who died four years ago!"

They broke open the floor and found there two heller coins, which the mother had once given the child so that he might give them to a beggar, but he had hidden them, dropping them into a crack in the floorboard, for himself to buy a dry crust of bread.

And it was because of these that he had no rest in his grave; it was because of these that he came every day; it was these that he was seeking...

The parents gave that money to a beggar, and from that time onward the child appeared no more.