find no sign of her anywhere. She's
gone, poor creature! There's some as fancy she's cast herself away into
the sea; and maybe that's true. It's borne in on my heart as that's
true; but God knows!"

Aunt Priscilla shuddered. She seemed to see in the darkness a slender,
girlish figure standing on the edge of one of the cliffs, and casting
herself down into the restless tide below. But she did not answer old
Nathan, and he went away with a very troubled heart.

But in a few days a rumour ran all through the country-side that Miss
Priscilla Parry's farmstead was haunted. And what spirit could haunt it
except Rhoda's? The washerwoman, coming to wash at three o'clock in the
morning, had seen a dim shape moving slowly in the black shadow of the
wall, made visible by a faint light from the setting moon. The ploughboy
and Nathan, going out early to work, had heard low, rustling footsteps
in the cow-shed as they opened the door.

Nurse Williams, who came every night to sleep with the baby, fancied she
was awakened by tappings on the lattice panes of the casement. Even
little Joan could hear Rhoda's sobs and moans, as she lay awake
shivering and trembling in bed, with her arm stretched across the baby
to save it from all harm. Everybody was certain now that Rhoda had
thrown herself from the cliffs into the sea; and though her body had
been drifted away by the currents, her ghost had come back to haunt the
place where she had once been so happy, and where her little baby was
living.

Aunt Priscilla had not left her locked and darkened room since she had
entered it on Christmas morning. No one dared to tell her directly of
Rhoda's spirit having come back to trouble and haunt the quiet
homestead. But she could hear all that went on in the kitchen below;
and in the daytime the neighbours were glad of any excuse to come to the
haunted house, though after nightfall no one would venture out into the
fold except old Nathan. The rough servant-girl and the ploughboy had
both been to her door, and given her notice that they were going to
leave; but she had not asked them for any reason. The last injury Rhoda
could do to her was to make the house a terror and a talk in the
country.

And now, as she sat alone, brooding over the past, with no work filling
the hard hands which were used to be so busy, she no longer thought of
Rhoda with the bitterness of wrath. She remembered what a young girl she
was, and how full of fancies, which made