bbery by the old
manor-house, which the coachman had said would drive him mad.

She determined not to think any more of these gloomy things; but now
that she had once noticed the sound there was no sealing her ears to it.
She could not help timing its creaks, and putting on a dread expectancy
just before the end of each half-minute that brought them. To imagine
the inside of the engine-house, whence these noises proceeded, was now a
necessity. No window, but crevices in the door, through which, probably,
the moonbeams streamed in the most attenuated and skeleton-like rays,
striking sharply upon portions of wet rusty cranks and chains; a
glistening wheel, turning incessantly, labouring in the dark like a
captive starving in a dungeon; and instead of a floor below, gurgling
water, which on account of the darkness could only be heard; water which
laboured up dark pipes almost to where she lay.

She shivered. Now she was determined to go to sleep; there could be
nothing else left to be heard or to imagine--it was horrid that her
imagination should be so restless. Yet just for an instant before going
to sleep she would think this--suppose another sound _should_ come--just
suppose it should! Before the thought had well passed through her brain,
a third sound came.

The third was a very soft gurgle or rattle--of a strange and abnormal
kind--yet a sound she had heard before at some past period of her
life--when, she could not recollect. To make it the more disturbing, it
seemed to be almost close to her--either close outside the window, close
under the floor, or close above the ceiling. The accidental fact of
its coming so immediately upon the heels of her supposition, told so
powerfully upon her excited nerves that she jumped up in the bed. The
same instant, a little dog in some room near, having probably heard the
same noise, set up a low whine. The watch-dog in the yard, hearing
the moan of his associate, began to howl loudly and distinctly. His
melancholy notes were taken up directly afterwards by the dogs in the
kennel a long way off, in every variety of wail.

One logical thought alone was able to enter her flurried brain. The
little dog that began the whining must have heard the other two sounds
even better than herself. He had taken no notice of them, but he had
taken notice of the third. The third, then, was an unusual sound.

It was not like water, it was not like wind; it was not the night-jar,
it was not a cloc