"Who told you that?"

"Sarah Batts."

"Sarah Batts! Why, how should she know anything about it? She hasn't been
here so long as you; and she came straight from the workhouse."

"I think master must have told her, mum."

"Your master would never have said anything so foolish. I know that _he_
doesn't believe in ghosts; and he keeps all his garden-seeds in the
locked room at the end of the passage; so he must go there sometimes
himself."

"O yes, mum; I know that master goes there. I've seen him go that way at
night with a candle."

"Well, you silly girl, he wouldn't use the room if he thought it was
haunted, would he? There are plenty more empty rooms in the house."

"I don't know about that, I'm sure, mum; but anyhow I know Sarah Batts
told me that passage was haunted. 'Don't you never go there, Martha,' she
says, 'unless you want to have your blood froze. I've heard things there
that have froze mine.' And I never should go, mum, if it wasn't for
moth--Mrs. Tadman's worrying and driving, about the place being cleaned
once in a way. And Sarah Batts is right, mum, however she may have got to
know it; for I have heard things."

"What things?"

"Moaning and groaning like, as if it was some one in pain; but all very
low; and I never could make out where it came from. But as to the place
being haunted, I've no more doubt about it than about my catechism."

"But, Martha, you ought to know it's very silly and wicked to believe in
such things," Ellen Whitelaw said, feeling it her duty to lecture the
girl a little, and yet half inclined to believe her. "The moanings and
groanings, as you call them, were only sounds made by the wind, I
daresay."

"O dear no, mum," Martha answered, shaking her head in a decided manner;
"the wind never made such noises as _I_ heard. But I don't want to make
you nervous, mum; only I'd sooner lose a month's wages than stay for an
hour alone in the west wing."

It was strange, certainly; a matter of no importance, perhaps, this idle
belief of a servant's, these sounds which harmed no one; and yet all
these circumstances worried and perplexed Ellen Whitelaw. Having so
little else to think of, she brooded upon them incessantly, and was
gradually getting into a low nervous way. If she complained, which she
did very rarely, there was no one to sympathise with her. Mrs. Tadman had
so many ailments of her own, such complicated maladies, such
deeply-rooted disorders, that she could be scarcely