Suddenly, while standing in the deep shadow, gazing thoughtfully up at those high towers which, though ruined, still guarded the end of the glen, a strange thing occurred—­something which startled her, causing her to halt breathless, petrified, rooted to the spot.  She stared straight before her.  Something uncanny was happening there, something that was, indeed, beyond human credence, and quite inexplicable.

CHAPTER XI

CONCERNS THE WHISPERS

What had startled Gabrielle was certainly extraordinary and decidedly uncanny.  She was standing near the southern wall, when, of a sudden, she heard low but distinct whispers.  Again she listened.  Yes.  The sounds were not due to her excited imagination at the recollection of those romantic traditions of love and hatred, or of those gruesome stories of how the Wolf of Badenoch had been kept prisoner there for five years and put to frightful tortures, or how the Laird of Weem was deliberately poisoned in that old banqueting-hall, the huge open fireplace of which still existed near where she stood.

There was the distinct sound of low, whispered words!  She held her breath to listen.  She tried to distinguish what the words were, but in vain.  Then she endeavoured to determine whence they emanated, but was unable to do so.  Again they sounded—­again—­and yet again.  Then there was another voice, still low, still whispering, but not quite so deep as the first.  It sounded like a woman’s.

Local tradition had it that the place held the ghosts of those who had died in agony within its noisome dungeons; but she had always been far too matter-of-fact to accept stories of the supernatural.  Yet at that moment her ears did not deceive her.  That pile of grim, gaunt ruins was a House of Whispers!

Again she listened, never moving a muscle.  An owl hooted weirdly in the ivy far above her, while near, at her feet, a rabbit scuttled away through the grass.  Such noises she was used to.  She knew every night-sound of the country-side; for when she had finished her work in the library she often went, unknown to the household, with Stewart upon his nocturnal rounds, and walked miles through the woods in the night.  The grey-eyed, thin-nosed head-keeper was her particular favourite.  He knew so much of natural history, and he taught her all he knew.  She could distinguish the cries of birds in the night, and could tell by certain sounds made by them, as they were disturbed, that no other intruders were in the vicinity.  But that weird whispering, coming as it did from an undiscovered source, was inhuman and utterly uncanny.