“Tell us what you mean, Middleton,” the lawyer asked, with ill-assumed indifference, “when you spoke of the howling of Roger Unthank's spirit?”
The old man turned patiently around.
“Just that, sir,” he replied. “It's round the house most weeks. Except for me odd nights, and Mrs. Unthank, there's been scarcely a servant would sleep in the Hall for years. Some of the maids they do come up from the village, but back they go before nightfall, and until morning there isn't a living soul would cross the path—no, not for a hundred pounds.”
“A howl, you call it?” Mr. Mangan observed.
“That's mostly like a dog that's hurt itself,” Middleton explained equably, “like a dog, that is, with a touch of human in its throat, as we've all heard in our time, sir. You'll hear it yourself, sir, maybe to-night or to-morrow night.”
“You've heard it then, Middleton?” his master asked.
“Why, surely, sir,” the old man replied in surprise. “Most weeks for the last ten years.”
“Haven't you ever got up and gone out to see what it was?”
The old man shook his head.
“But I knew right well what that was, sir,” he said, “and I'm not one for looking on spirits. Spirits there are that walk this world, as we well know, and the spirit of Roger Unthank walks from between the Black Wood and those windows, come every week of the year. But I'm not for looking at him. There's evil comes of that. I turn over in my bed, and I stop my ears, but I've never yet raised a blind.”