CHAPTER XI.

SOME TALK ABOUT THE HAUNTED HOUSE--BEING, AS I SUPPOSE, ONLY OLD WOMAN'S
TALES.

Old Sally always attended her young mistress while she prepared for
bed--not that Lilias required help, for she had the spirit of neatness
and a joyous, gentle alacrity, and only troubled the good old creature
enough to prevent her thinking herself grown old and useless.

Sally, in her quiet way, was garrulous, and she had all sorts of
old-world tales of wonder and adventure, to which Lilias often went
pleasantly to sleep; for there was no danger while old Sally sat
knitting there by the fire, and the sound of the rector's mounting upon
his chairs, as was his wont, and taking down and putting up his books in
the study beneath, though muffled and faint, gave evidence that that
good and loving influence was awake and busy.

Old Sally was telling her young mistress, who sometimes listened with a
smile, and sometimes lost a good five minutes together of her gentle
prattle, how the young gentleman, Mr. Mervyn, had taken that awful old
haunted habitation, the Tiled House 'beyant at Ballyfermot,' and was
going to stay there, and wondered no one had told him of the mysterious
dangers of that desolate mansion.

It stood by a lonely bend of the narrow road. Lilias had often looked
upon the short, straight, grass-grown avenue with an awful curiosity at
the old house which she had learned in childhood to fear as the abode of
shadowy tenants and unearthly dangers.

'There are people, Sally, nowadays, who call themselves free-thinkers,
and don't believe in anything--even in ghosts,' said Lilias.

'A then the place he's stopping in now, Miss Lily, 'ill soon cure him of
free-thinking, if the half they say about it's true,' answered Sally.

'But I don't say, mind, he's a free-thinker, for I don't know anything
of Mr. Mervyn; but if he be not, he must be very brave, or very good,
indeed. I know, Sally, I should be horribly afraid, indeed, to sleep in
it myself,' answered Lilias, with a cosy little shudder, as the aerial
image of the old house for a moment stood before her, with its peculiar
malign, sacred, and skulking aspect, as if it had drawn back in shame
and guilt under the melancholy old elms among the tall hemlock and
nettles.

'And now, Sally, I'm safe in bed. Stir the fire, my old darling.' For
although it was the first week in May, the night was frosty. 'And tell
me all about the Tiled House again, and frighten me ou