ge since
his previous visit. The principal of these, it seemed, had been the
reappearance, after a long period of inaction, of the White Lady of the
Shrieking Pit--an apparition which haunted the hut circles on the rise.
Colwyn, recalling that Duney and Backlos imagined they had encountered a
spectre the night they saw Penreath on the edge of the wood, asked Ann
who the "White Lady" was supposed to be. Ann was reticent at first. She
admitted that she was a firm believer in the local tradition, which she
had imbibed with her mother's milk, but it was held to be unlucky to
talk about the White Lady. However, her feminine desire to impart
information soon overcame her fears, and she launched forth into full
particulars of the legend. It appeared that for generations past the
deep pit on the rise in which Mr. Glenthorpe's body had been thrown had
been the haunt of a spirit known as the White Lady, who, from time to
time, issued from the depths of the pit, clad in a white trailing
garment, to wander along the hut circles on the rise, shrieking and
sobbing piteously. Whose ghost she was, and why she shrieked, Ann was
unable to say. Her appearances were infrequent, with sometimes as long
as a year between them, and the timely warning she gave of her coming by
shrieking from the depths of the pit before making her appearance,
enabled folk to keep indoors and avoid her when she was walking. As long
as she wasn't seen by anybody, not much harm was done, but the sight of
her was fatal to the beholder, who was sure to come to a swift and
violent end.

Ann related divers accredited instances of calamity which had followed
swiftly upon an encounter with the White Lady, including that of her own
sister's husband, who had seen her one night going home, and the very
next day had been kicked by a horse and killed on the spot. Ann's
grandmother, when a young girl, had heard her shrieking one night when
she was going home, but had had the presence of mind to fall flat on her
face until the shrieking had ceased, by which means she avoided seeing
her, and had died comfortably in her bed at eighty-one in consequence.

Colwyn gathered from the countrywoman's story that the prevailing
impression in the village was that Mr. Glenthorpe's murder was due to
the interposition of the White Lady of the Shrieking Pit. The White
Lady, after a long silence, had been heard to shriek once two nights
before the murder, but the warning had not deterred Mr.