“How do you know you could?”
“Well, since you so mercilessly bring me to bay I am compelled to answer you with a woman’s reason. I know it—because I do.”
They both laugh heartily.
“And now tell me,” goes on the stranger. “What is the name of those two eccentric towers of rock you are drawing?”
“They are called The Skegs. There is a story attached to them, and a ghost.”
“Yes? What sort of a one?”
“Well, it’s rather an eerie affair altogether. Most family ghosts haunt the family seat. That of the Dorriens seems to prefer the open air. The story is a very old one. Two Dorriens fell madly in love with the same girl.”
“Not an uncommon circumstance. And did they fight—or play écarté for her?”
“Neither. One killed the other. It’s a long story, and I’m very bad at telling long stories. I always mix up the people and begin by telling the end first. But the end of this one is that The Skegs are haunted by the murderer’s ghost, and that it only appears before the death of a Dorrien. Then a black cloud settles down upon the highest of the two rocks, and those who see it can distinctly hear the wild baying of a dog. And it takes the shape of one.”
“A decidedly uncanny, though not original form, for there’s no part of the world without that very phase of apparition,” remarks the stranger, gazing thoughtfully at the two great rock towers. “Has anyone ever seen this spectre?”