The ancient dame, after being convinced that the sound was nothing uncanny, proceeded with her narrative. It was a long one, with an old house in it by the banks of a winding river in the midst of woods and wilds—a house that, if its walls had been able to speak, could have told many a marrow-freezing story of bygone times.
There was a room in this house that was haunted. Old Kate was just coming to this, and to the part of her tale on which the ghosts on a certain night of the year always appeared in this room, and stood over a dark stain in the centre of the floor.
"And ne'er a ane," she was saying, "could wash that stain awa'. Weel, bairns, one moonlicht nicht, and at the deadest hoor o' the nicht, nothing would please the auld laird but he maun leave his chaimber and go straight along the damp, dreary, long corridor to the door o' the hauntid room. It was half open, and the moon's licht danced in on the fleer. He was listening—he was looking——"
But at this very moment, when old Kate had lowered her voice to a whisper, and the tension at her listeners' heart-strings was the greatest, a soft, heavy footstep was heard coming slowly, painfully as it might be, up the turret stairs.
To say that every one was alarmed would but poorly describe their feelings. Old Kate's eyes seemed as big as watch-glasses. Elsie screamed, and clung to Archie.
"Who—oo—'s— Who's there?" cried Branson, and his voice sounded fearful and far away.
No answer; but the steps drew nearer and nearer. Then the curtain was pushed aside, and in dashed—what? a ghost?—no, only honest great Bounder.
Bounder had found out there was something going on, and that Fuss was up there, and he didn't see why he should be left out in the cold. That was all; but the feeling of relief when he did appear was unprecedented.
Old Kate required another cup of tea after that. Then Branson got out his fiddle from a green baize bag; and if he had not played those merry airs, I do not believe that old Kate would have had the courage to go downstairs that night at all.
Archie's pony was great fun at first. The best of it was that he had never been broken in. The Squire, or rather his bailiff, had bought him out of a drove; so he was, literally speaking, as wild as the hills, and as mad as a March hare. But he soon knew Archie and Elsie, and, under Branson's supervision, Scallowa was put into training on the lawn. He was led, he was walked, he was galloped. But he reared, and kicked, and rolled whenever he thought of it, and yet there was not a bit of vice about him.