“What!” cried Tod.
“And I believe from my very soul that it is his spirit that cries!” she went on, her voice taking as much excitement as any voice, only half raised, can take. “His spirit is unable to rest. It is here, hovering about the Torr. Hush! there it comes again.”
It was anything but agreeable, I can assure you, to stand in that big white moonlit plain, listening to those mysterious cries and to these ghostly suggestions. Tod was listening with all his ears.
“They are the very cries he used to make in his illness at the farm,” said Mrs. Radcliffe. “I can’t forget them. I should know them anywhere. The same sound of voice, the same wail of anguish: I could almost fancy that I hear the words. Listen.”
It did seem like it. One might have fancied that his name was repeated with a cry for help. “Help! Frank Radcliffe! Help!” But at such a moment as this, when the nerves are strung up to concert pitch, imagination plays us all sorts of impossible tricks.
“I’ll be shot if it’s not like Frank Radcliffe’s voice!” exclaimed Tod, breaking the silence. “And calling out, too.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Francis. “I shall not be able to bear this long: I shall have to speak of it to the world. When I say that you have recognized his voice also, they will be less likely to mock at me as a lunatic. David did, when I told him. At least, I could make no impression on him.”
Tod was lying down with his ear to the ground. But he soon got up, saying he could not hear so well.
“Did Stephen kill him, do you think?” she asked, in a dread whisper, drawing closer to us. “Why, else, should his poor unquiet spirit haunt the region of the Torr?”