But there was no answer.
"On the Bare Plain, I take it," resumed the woman. "Were't a-nigh they mounds by the Shaaft? Sounds echoes in they zigzag paths rarely. I've heard the wind a-whistling like anything there afore now. She be a pewerly lonesome consarn, thaat Shaaft, for waun who has to paas her at night alone."
A moan, telling of the sharpest mental agony, broke from Rosaline. Dame Bell heard it as she was coming in. In the midst of her sympathy, it angered her.
"Rosaline, I won't have this. There's reason in roasting of eggs. We shall have your father here directly, and what will he say? I can tell you, he was bad enough when he went out. Come! just rouse yourself."
"Father heard the Whistlers, and—they—bode—death!" shivered Rosaline.
"They don't bode yours, I say," repeated Dame Bell, losing patience. "Do you suppose death comes to every person who hears the Whistlers?—or ill-luck either?"
"No, no," assented Nancy Tomson, for Rosaline did not speak. "For waun that faals into ill-luck after hearing they Whistlers, ten escapes. I've knowed a whole crowd o' they men hear the sounds, and nought heve come on't to any waun on 'em."
"And that's quite true," said Mrs. Bell.
Rosaline could not be persuaded to try the soup. It was impossible that she could swallow it, she said. Taking a candle; she went up to her room; to bed, as her mother supposed.
"And the best place for her," remarked Dame Bell. "To think of her getting a fright like this!"