Here old Sally’s tale and her knitting ceased for a moment, as if she were listening to the wind outside the haunted precincts of the Tiled house; and she took up her parable again.

’The very night he met his death in England, old Oliver, the butler, was listening to Dalton—­for Dalton was a scholar—­reading the letter that came to him through the post that day, telling him to get things ready, for his troubles wor nearly over and he expected to be with them again in a few days, and maybe almost as soon as the letter; and sure enough, while he was reading, there comes a frightful rattle at the window, like some one all in a tremble, trying to shake it open, and the earl’s voice, as they both conceited, cries from outside, “Let me in, let me in, let me in!” “It’s him,” says the butler. “’Tis so, bedad,” says Dalton, and they both looked at the windy, and at one another—­and then back again—­overjoyed, in a soart of a way, and frightened all at onst.  Old Oliver was bad with the rheumatiz.  So away goes Dalton to the hall-door, and he calls “who’s there?” and no answer.  “Maybe,” says Dalton, to himself, “’tis what he’s rid round to the back-door;” so to the back-door with him, and there he shouts again—­and no answer, and not a sound outside—­and he began to feel quare, and to the hall door with him back again.  “Who’s there? do you hear? who’s there?” he shouts, and receives no answer still.  “I’ll open the door at any rate,” says he, “maybe it’s what he’s made his escape,” for they knew all about his troubles, and wants to get in without noise, so praying all the time—­for his mind misgave him it might not be all right—­he shifts the bars and unlocks the door; but neither man, woman, nor child, nor horse, nor any living shape was standing there, only something or another slipt into the house close by his leg; it might be a dog, or something that way, he could not tell, for he only seen it for a moment with the corner of his eye, and it went in just like as if it belonged to the place.  He could not see which way it went, up or down, but the house was never a happy one, or a quiet house after; and Dalton bangs the hall-door, and he took a sort of a turn and a trembling, and back with him to Oliver, the butler, looking as white as the blank leaf of his master’s letter, that was between his finger and thumb.  “What is it? what is it?” says the butler, catching his crutch like a waypon, fastening his eyes on Dalton’s white face, and growing almost as pale himself.  “The master’s dead,” says Dalton—­and so he was, signs on it.

’After the turn she got by what she seen in the orchard, when she came to know the truth of what it was, Jinny Cresswell, you may be sure, did not stay there an hour longer than she could help:  and she began to take notice of things she did not mind before—­such as when she went into the big bed-room over the hall, that the lord used to sleep in, whenever she went in at one door the other door