So good old Sally, whose faith in such matters was a religion, went off over the well-known ground in a gentle little amble—­sometimes subsiding into a walk as she approached some special horror, and pulling up altogether—­that is to say, suspending her knitting, and looking with a mysterious nod at her young mistress in the four-poster, or lowering her voice to a sort of whisper when the crisis came.

So she told her how when the neighbours hired the orchard that ran up to the windows at the back of the house, the dogs they kept there used to howl so wildly and wolfishly all night among the trees, and prowl under the walls of the house so dejectedly, that they were fain to open the door and let them in at last; and, indeed, small need was there for dogs; for no one, young or old, dared go near the orchard after night-fall.  No, the burnished golden pippins that peeped through the leaves in the western rays of evening, and made the mouths of the Ballyfermot school-boys water, glowed undisturbed in the morning sunbeams, and secure in the mysterious tutelage of the night smiled coyly on their predatory longings.  And this was no fanciful reserve and avoidance.  Mick Daly, when he had the orchard, used to sleep in the loft over the kitchen; and he swore that within five or six weeks, while he lodged there, he twice saw the same thing, and that was a lady in a hood and a loose dress, her head drooping, and her finger on her lip, walking in silence among the crooked stems, with a little child by the hand, who ran smiling and skipping beside her.  And the Widow Cresswell once met them at night-fall, on the path through the orchard to the back-door, and she did not know what it was until she saw the men looking at one another as she told it.

‘It’s often she told it to me,’ said old Sally; ’and how she came on them all of a sudden at the turn of the path, just by the thick clump of alder trees; and how she stopped, thinking it was some lady that had a right to be there; and how they went by as swift as the shadow of a cloud, though she only seemed to be walking slow enough, and the little child pulling by her arm, this way and that way, and took no notice of her, nor even raised her head, though she stopped and courtesied.  And old Dalton, don’t you remember old Dalton, Miss Lily?’

‘I think I do, the old man who limped, and wore the old black wig?’

’Yes, indeed, acushla, so he did.  See how well she remembers!  That was by a kick of one of the earl’s horses—­he was groom there,’ resumed Sally.  ’He used to be troubled with hearing the very sounds his master used to make to bring him and old Oliver to the door, when he came back late.  It was only on very dark nights when there was no moon.  They used to hear all on a sudden, the whimpering and scraping of dogs at the hall door, and the sound of the whistle, and the light stroke across the window with the lash of the whip, just like as if the earl himself—­may his poor soul find rest—­was there.  First the wind ’id stop, like you’d be holding your breath, then came these sounds they knew so well, and when they made no sign of stirring or opening the door, the wind ’id begin again with such a hoo-hoo-o-o-high, you’d think it was laughing, and crying, and hooting all at once.’