ee of the
Grahams. The night was perfectly calm. Not a leaf stirred either upon
that or upon the other trees. The ivy, high above and exposed to the
slightest breath of a breeze, was motionless; only the going and coming
of the night-birds moved it. No. She decided once and for all that the
noise was that of voices, spectral voices though they might be.

Again she strained her eyes, when still again those soft, sibilant
whisperings sounded weird and quite inexplicable.

Slowly, and with greatest caution, she moved along beneath the wall, but
as she did so she seemed to recede from the sound. So back she went to
the spot where she had previously stood, and there again remained
listening.

There were two distinct voices; at least that was the conclusion at
which she arrived after nearly a quarter of an hour of most minute
investigation.

Once she fancied, in her excitement, that away in the farther corner of
the ruined courtyard she saw a slowly moving form like a thin column of
mist. Was it the Lady of Glencardine--the apparition of the hapless Lady
Jane Glencardine? But on closer inspection she decided that it was
merely due to her own distorted imagination, and dismissed it from her
mind.

Those low, curious whisperings alone puzzled her. They were certainly
not sounds that could be made by any rodents within the walls, because
they were voices, distinctly and indisputably _voices_, which at some
moments were raised in argument, and then fell away into sounds of
indistinct murmuring. Whence did they come? She again moved noiselessly
from place to place, at length deciding that only at one point--the
point where she had first stood--could the sounds be heard distinctly.
So to that spot once more the girl returned, standing there like a
statue, her ears strained for every sound, waiting and wondering. But
the Whispers had now ceased. In the distance the stable-clock chimed
two. Yet she remained at her post, determined to solve the mystery, and
not in the least afraid of those weird stories which the country-folk in
the Highlands so entirely believed. No ghost, of whatever form, could
frighten her, she told herself. She had never believed in omens or
superstitions, and she steeled herself not to believe in them now. So
she remained there in patience, seeking some natural solution of the
extraordinary enigma.

But though she waited until the chimes rang out three o'clock and the
moon was going down, she heard no ot