; but Aunt Lois had a
sister Cerinthy that was a weakly girl, and had the janders. Cerinthy
was one of the sort that's born with veils over their faces, and can see
sperits; and one time Cerinthy was a-visitin' Lois after her second baby
was born, and there came up a blow, and Cerinthy comes out of the
keepin'-room, where the cradle was a-standin', and says, 'Sister,' says
she, 'who's that woman sittin' rockin' the cradle?' and Aunt Lois says
she, 'Why, there ain't nobody. That ar cradle always will rock in a
gale, but I've got used to it, and don't mind it.' 'Well,' says
Cerinthy, 'jist as true as you live, I just saw a woman with a silk gown
on, and long black hair a-hangin' down, and her face was pale as a
sheet, sittin' rockin' that ar cradle, and she looked round at me with
her great black eyes kind o' mournful and wishful, and then she stooped
down over the cradle.' 'Well,' says Lois, 'I ain't goin' to have no such
doin's in my house,' and she went right in and took up the baby, and the
very next day she jist had the cradle split up for kindlin'; and that
night, if you'll believe, when they was a-burnin' of it, they heard,
jist as plain as could be, a baby scream, scream, screamin' round the
house; but after that they never heard it no more."

"I don't like such stories," said Dame Pennel, "'specially to-night,
when Mara's away. I shall get to hearing all sorts of noises in the
wind. I wonder when Cap'n Pennel will be back."

And the good woman put more wood on the fire, and as the tongues of
flame streamed up high and clear, she approached her face to the
window-pane and started back with half a scream, as a pale, anxious
visage with sad dark eyes seemed to approach her. It took a moment or
two for her to discover that she had seen only the reflection of her own
anxious, excited face, the pitchy blackness without having converted the
window into a sort of dark mirror.

Miss Ruey meanwhile began solacing herself by singing, in her
chimney-corner, a very favorite sacred melody, which contrasted oddly
enough with the driving storm and howling sea:--

"Haste, my beloved, haste away,
Cut short the hours of thy delay;
Fly like the bounding hart or roe,
Over the hills where spices grow."

The tune was called "Invitation,"--one of those profusely florid in
runs, and trills, and quavers, which delighted the ears of a former
generation; and Miss Ruey, innocently unconscious of the effect of old
age o