ght out--or see, I'll do it. I
dinna hold wi' your secrets, and a secret that the haill toun kens!" She
snapped her fingers with an air of large disdain. As for Jarvis, ruddy
and big as he was, he shrank to nothing before this decided woman. He
repeated to her two or three times her own adjuration, "Hold your peace!"
then, suddenly changing his tone, cried out, "Tell him then, confound
ye! I'll wash my hands o't. If a' the ghosts in Scotland were in the auld
hoose, is that ony concern o' mine?"

After this I elicited without much difficulty the whole story. In the
opinion of the Jarvises, and of everybody about, the certainty that the
place was haunted was beyond all doubt. As Sandy and his wife warmed to
the tale, one tripping up another in their eagerness to tell everything,
it gradually developed as distinct a superstition as I ever heard, and
not without poetry and pathos. How long it was since the voice had been
heard first, nobody could tell with certainty. Jarvis's opinion was that
his father, who had been coachman at Brentwood before him, had never
heard anything about it, and that the whole thing had arisen within the
last ten years, since the complete dismantling of the old house; which
was a wonderfully modern date for a tale so well authenticated. According
to these witnesses, and to several whom I questioned afterwards, and who
were all in perfect agreement, it was only in the months of November and
December that "the visitation" occurred. During these months, the darkest
of the year, scarcely a night passed without the recurrence of these
inexplicable cries. Nothing, it was said, had ever been seen,--at least,
nothing that could be identified. Some people, bolder or more imaginative
than the others, had seen the darkness moving, Mrs. Jarvis said, with
unconscious poetry. It began when night fell, and continued, at
intervals, till day broke. Very often it was only all inarticulate cry
and moaning, but sometimes the words which had taken possession of my
poor boy's fancy had been distinctly audible,--"Oh, mother, let me in!"
The Jarvises were not aware that there had ever been any investigation
into it. The estate of Brentwood had lapsed into the hands of a distant
branch of the family, who had lived but little there; and of the many
people who had taken it, as I had done, few had remained through two
Decembers. And nobody had taken the trouble to make a very close
examination into the facts. "No, no," Jarvis