d three days after,
the play begins again.'

'An improving spectacle for the valley,' said Mrs. Seaton drily.

'Oh, my dear madam,' said the doctor, shrugging his shoulders, 'we can't
all be so virtuous. If old Jim is a drunkard, he has got a heart of his
own somewhere, and can nurse a dying niece like a woman. Miss Leyburn
can tell us something about that.'

And he turned round to his neighbour with a complete change of
expression, and a voice that had a new note in it of affectionate
respect. Catherine coloured as if she did not like being addressed on
the subject, and just nodded a little with gentle affirmative eyes.

'A strange case,' said Dr. Baker, again looking at Elsmere. 'It is a
family that is original and old-world even in its ways of dying. I have
been a doctor in these parts for five-and-twenty years. I have seen what
you may call old Westmoreland die out--costume, dialect, superstitions.
At least, as to dialect, the people have become bi-lingual. I sometimes
think they talk it to each other as much as ever, but some of them won't
talk it to you and me at all. And as to superstitions, the only ghost
story I know that still has some hold on popular belief is the one which
attaches to this mountain here, High Fell, at the end of this valley.'

He paused a moment. A salutary sense has begun to penetrate even modern
provincial society, that no man may tell a ghost story without leave.
Rose threw a merry glance at him. They two were very old friends. Dr.
Baker had pulled out her first teeth and given her a sixpence afterwards
for each operation. The pull was soon forgotten; the sixpence lived on
gratefully in a child's warm memory.

'Tell it,' she said; 'we give you leave. We won't interrupt you unless
you put in too many inventions.'

'You invite me to break the first law of story-telling, Miss Rose,' said
the doctor, lifting a finger at her. 'Every man is bound to leave a
story better than he found it. However, I couldn't tell it if I would. I
don't know what makes the poor ghost walk; and if you do, I shall say
you invent. But at any rate there is a ghost, and she walks along the
side of High Fell at midnight every Midsummer day. If you see her and
she passes you in silence, why you only get a fright for your pains. But
if she speaks to you, you die within the year. Old John Backhouse is a
widower with one daughter. This girl saw the ghost last Midsummer day,
and Miss Leyburn and I are now doing our b