see it with my own eyes? And seein's believin', ain't it?"

"You arouse my curiosity," I said. "Let us have the story by all means,
and if it is a personal experience, so much the better."

"Well, sir," began the old man, evidently gratified by these signs of
interest, and casting a triumphant glance at his son, "what I've got to
tell you don't belong to this time of day, of course. When I says I was
a little chap of six years old or thereabouts, and that I'll be
eighty-five come Michaelmas, you'll understand that it must have been a
tidy sight of years ago.

"Father, he was keeper on these moors here, same as his son's been after
him, and as _his_ son"--with a glance of fatherly pride at the stalwart
young fellow beside him--"is now, and will be for many years to come,
please God. Him and mother and me, the three of us, lived together in
just such another cottage as this one, across t'other side of the moor,
out Farnington way. The railway runs past there now, over the very place
the cottage stood on, I believe; but no one so much as dreamt o'
railways, time I talk on. Not a road was near, and all around there was
nothin' but the moors stretching away for miles, all purple ling and
heather, with not a living soul nearer than Wharton, and that was a good
twelve miles away. It was pretty lonely for mother, o' course, during
the day; but she was a brave woman, and when dad come home at night,
never a word would she let on to tell him how right down scared she got
at times and how mortally sick she felt of hearing the sound of her own
voice.

"'Been pretty quiet for you, Polly?' dad would say at night sometimes,
when the three of us would be sitting round the fire, with the flame
dancing and shining on the wall and making black shadows in all the
corners.

"'Ye-es, so, so,' mother would answer, kind of grudging like, and then
she'd start telling him what she'd been about all day, or something as
I'd said or done, so as to turn his attention, you see, sir. And as a
woman can gen'rally lead a man off on whatever trail she likes to get
his nose on dad would never think no more about it; and as for mother
and me being that lonely, when he and the dogs were all away, why, I
don't suppose the thought of it ever entered his head. So, what with her
never complaining, and that, dad grew easier in his mind, and once or
twice, when he'd be away at the Castle late in the afternoon, he'd even
stay there overnight.

"Well, sir,