nothing that could be identified. Some people, bolder or more imaginative
than the others, had seen the darkness moving, Mrs. Jarvis said, with
unconscious poetry. It began when night fell, and continued, at
intervals, till day broke. Very often it was only all inarticulate cry
and moaning, but sometimes the words which had taken possession of my
poor boy's fancy had been distinctly audible,--"Oh, mother, let me in!"
The Jarvises were not aware that there had ever been any investigation
into it. The estate of Brentwood had lapsed into the hands of a distant
branch of the family, who had lived but little there; and of the many
people who had taken it, as I had done, few had remained through two
Decembers. And nobody had taken the trouble to make a very close
examination into the facts. "No, no," Jarvis said, shaking his head,
"No, no, Cornel. Wha wad set themsels up for a laughin'-stock to a' the
country-side, making a wark about a ghost? Naebody believes in ghosts. It
bid to be the wind in the trees, the last gentleman said, or some effec'
o' the water wrastlin' among the rocks. He said it was a' quite easy
explained; but he gave up the hoose. And when you cam, Cornel, we were
awfu' anxious you should never hear. What for should I have spoiled the
bargain and hairmed the property for no-thing?"

"Do you call my child's life nothing?" I said in the trouble of the
moment, unable to restrain myself. "And instead of telling this all to
me, you have told it to him,--to a delicate boy, a child unable to sift
evidence or judge for himself, a tender-hearted young creature--"

I was walking about the room with an anger all the hotter that I felt it
to be most likely quite unjust. My heart was full of bitterness against
the stolid retainers of a family who were content to risk other people's
children and comfort rather than let a house be empty. If I had been
warned I might have taken precautions, or left the place, or sent Roland