l 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 used to be pulled to very quick, as
if some one avoiding her was getting out in haste; but the thing that
frightened her most was just this--that sometimes she used to find a
long straight mark from the head to the foot of her bed, as if 'twas
made by something heavy lying there, and the place where it was used to
feel warm--as if--whoever it was--they only left it as she came into the
room.

'But the worst of all was poor Kitty Haplin, the young woman that died
of what she seen. Her mother said it was how she was kept awake all the
night with the walking about of some one in the next room, tumbling
about boxes, and pulling over drawers, and talking and sighing to
himself, and she, poor thing, wishing to go asleep, and wondering who it
could be, when in he comes, a fine man, in a sort of loose silk
morning-dress, an' no wig, but a velvet cap on, and to the windy with
him quiet and aisy, and she makes a turn in the bed to let him know
there was some one there, thinking he'd go away, but instead of that,
over he comes to the side of the bed, looking very bad, and says
something to her--but his speech was thick and choaki