The Stolen Farthings

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The Stolen Farthings is Tale 154 from Grimm's Fairy Tales. It is actually a ghost story.

A couple was having dinner with their guest. At 12 o'clock sharp at night, the guest saw a little kid in white dress came in the house and went straight into the next room. The same thing happened again the next day and the day after that. The guest told the father what happened. The father said he had never seen the girl before. One night, the guest peeked in the room. He saw the little kid sitting on the floor, and digging up something between the boards of the floor. He reported what he saw to the mother, and she told him that it was probably their kid who died a month ago. The child received 2 farthings from the mother and was planning on giving it out to a poor man. It changed its mind and decided to hide them between the boards in the floor so it could buy biscuits later. However, it did not get to use them before it died. Thus, it came back to check on the farthings. The ghost never came back after they donated the farthings to a poor man.