ther's arm. John swore and struggled, but the old
man stuck like a limpet.

'You let 'un aleann' said Mary, drawing her tattered shawl over her
breast. 'If he aims to kill me, aa'll not say naa. But lie needn't
moider hisself! There's them abuve as ha' taken care o' that!'

She sank again into her chair, as though her limbs could not support
her, and her eyes closed in utter indifference of a fatigue which had
made even fear impossible.

The father's arm dropped; he stood there sullenly looking at her. Jim,
thinking she had fainted, went up to her, took a glass of water out of
which she had already been drinking from the mahogany table, and held it
to her lips. She drank a little, and then with a desperate effort raised
herself, and clutching the arm of the chair, faced her father.

'Ye'll not hev to wait lang. Doan't ye fash yersel. Maybe it ull comfort
ye to knaw summat! Lasst Midsummer Day aa was on t' Shanmoor road, i' t'
gloaming. An' aa saw theer t' bogle,--thee knaws, t' bogle o' Bleacliff
Tarn; an' she turned hersel, an' she spoak to me!'

She uttered the last words with a grim emphasis, dwelling on each, the
whole life of the wasted face concentrated in the terrible black eyes,
which gazed past the two figures within their immediate range into
a vacancy peopled with horror. Then a film came over, them, the grip
relaxed, and she fell back with a lurch of the rocking-chair in a dead
swoon.

With the help of the neighbor from next door, Jim got her up-stairs into
the room that had been hers. She awoke from her swoon only to fall into
the torpid sleep of exhaustion, which lasted for twelve hours.

'Keep her oot o' ma way,' said the father with an oath to Jim, 'or aa'll
not answer nayther for her nor me!'

She needed no telling. She soon crept down-stairs again, and went to the
task of house-cleaning. The two men lived in the kitchen as before; when
they were at home she ate and sat in the parlor alone. Jim watched
her as far as his dull brain was capable of watching, and he dimly
understood that she was dying. Both men, indeed, felt a sort of
superstitious awe of her, she was so changed, so unearthly. As for the
story of the ghost, the old popular superstitions are almost dead in
the Cumbrian mountains, and the shrewd north-country peasant is in many
places quite as scornfully ready to sacrifice his ghosts to the Time
Spirit as any 'bold bad' haunter of scientific associations could wish
him to be. But in