bject, and just nodded a little with gentle affirmative eyes.

'A strange case.' said Dr. Baker again looking at Elsmere. It is a
family that is original and old-world even in its ways of dying. I have
been a doctor in these parts for five-and-twenty years. I have seen what
you may call old Westmoreland die out--costume, dialect, superstitions.
At least, as to dialect, the people have become bilingual. I sometimes
think they talk it to each other as much as ever, but some of them won't
talk it to you and me at all. And as to superstitions, the only ghost
story I know that still has some hold on popular belief is the one which
attaches to this mountain here, High Fell, at the end of this valley.'

He paused a moment. A salutary sense has begun to penetrate even modern
provincial society, that no man may tell a ghost story without leave.
Rose threw a merry glance at him. They two were very old friends. Dr.
Baker had pulled out her first teeth and given her a sixpence afterward
for each operation. The pull was soon forgotten; the sixpence lived on
gratefully in a child's warm memory.

'Tell it,' she said; 'we give you leave. We won't interrupt you unless
you put in too many inventions.'

'You invite me to break the first law of storytelling, Miss Rose,' said
the doctor, lifting a finger at her. 'Every man is bound to leave a
story better than he found it. However, I couldn't tell it if I would.
I don't know what makes the poor ghost walk; and if you do, I shall say
you invent. But at any rate there is a ghost, and she walks along the
side of High Fell at midnight every Midsummer day. If you see her and
she passes you in silence, why you only got a fright for your pains. But
if she speaks to you, you die within the year. Old John Backhouse is a
widower with one daughter. This girl saw the ghost last Midsummer day,
and Miss Leyburn and I are now doing our best to keep her alive over the
next; but with very small prospect of success.'

'What is the girl dying of?--fright?' asked Mrs. Seaton harshly.

'Oh, no!' said the doctor hastily, 'not precisely. A sad story; better
not inquire into it. But at the present moment the time of her death
seeing likely to be determined by the strength of her own and other
people's belief in the ghost's summons.'

Mrs. Seaton's grim mouth relaxed into an ungenial smile. She put up her
eye-glass and looked at Catherine. 'An unpleasant household, I should
imagine,' she said shortly, 'for a