lost in a sigh.




CHAPTER X

THE HOUSE OF THE SILENT SORROW


A bell tolled mournfully with a slow, swinging cadence like a passing
bell. On winter nights folks, passing the House of the Silent Sorrow,
compared the doleful clanging to the boom that carries the criminal from
the cell to the scaffold. Every night all the year round the little
valley of Longdean echoed to that mournful clang. Perhaps it was for this
reason that a wandering poet christened the place as the House of the
Silent Sorrow.

For seven years this had been going on now, until nobody but strangers
noticed it. From half-past seven till eight o'clock that hideous bell
rang its swinging, melancholy note. Why it was nobody could possibly
tell. Nobody in the village had ever been beyond the great rusty gates
leading to a dark drive of Scotch firs, though one small boy bolder than
the rest had once climbed the lichen-strewn stone wall and penetrated the
thick undergrowth beyond. Hence he had returned, with white face and
staring eyes, with the information that great wild dogs dwelt in the
thickets. Subsequently the village poacher confirmed this information. He
was not exactly loquacious on the subject, but merely hinted that the
grounds of Longdean Grange were not salubrious for naturalists with a
predatory disposition.