ld be only too happy, on
behalf of the owners, to let anyone have the house rent free for a
term of years if only to accustom the people here to see it inhabited.
It has been so long empty that some kind of absurd prejudice has grown
up about it, and this can be best put down by its occupation--if
only,' he added with a sly glance at Malcolmson, 'by a scholar like
yourself, who wants its quiet for a time.'

Malcolmson thought it needless to ask the agent about the 'absurd
prejudice'; he knew he would get more information, if he should
require it, on that subject from other quarters. He paid his three
months' rent, got a receipt, and the name of an old woman who would
probably undertake to 'do' for him, and came away with the keys in his
pocket. He then went to the landlady of the inn, who was a cheerful
and most kindly person, and asked her advice as to such stores and
provisions as he would be likely to require. She threw up her hands in
amazement when he told her where he was going to settle himself.

'Not in the Judge's House!' she said, and grew pale as she spoke. He
explained the locality of the house, saying that he did not know its
name. When he had finished she answered:

'Aye, sure enough--sure enough the very place! It is the Judge's House
sure enough.' He asked her to tell him about the place, why so called,
and what there was against it. She told him that it was so called
locally because it had been many years before--how long she could not
say, as she was herself from another part of the country, but she
thought it must have been a hundred years or more--the abode of a
judge who was held in great terror on account of his harsh sentences
and his hostility to prisoners at Assizes. As to what there was
against the house itself she could not tell. She had often asked, but
no one could inform her; but there was a general feeling that there
was _something_, and for her own part she would not take all the money
in Drinkwater's Bank and stay in the house an hour by herself. Then
she apologised to Malcolmson for her disturbing talk.

'It is too bad of me, sir, and you--and a young gentlemen, too--if you
will pardon me saying it, going to live there all alone. If you were
my boy--and you'll excuse me for saying it--you wouldn't sleep there a
night, not if I had to go there myself and pull the big alarm bell
that's on the roof!' The good creature was so manifestly in earnest,
and was so kindly in her intentions, t