"Eerie, rather, I should say," replied her sister, "but that, you know, is the beauty of it. In the morning, I daresay, it will look bright enough, but I confess I do not like that clock. Listen, can't you hear its ticking, faintly, even here, at the end of that long passage?"
"What clock do you mean? I saw no clock," said Edith, but almost before Helen could answer, her soft regular breathing told that she was asleep. Helen however, could not so quickly compose herself. She felt excited and vaguely uneasy; and when she at last fell asleep, it was only to have her discomfort increased, by absurd, yet alarming dreams. With them all the ugly clock was grotesquely intermingled. Sometimes it was herself, sometimes Edith, and once Malcolm, whom she fancied in some position of terrible peril, always associated with the clock, and at last she awoke with a half-smothered scream of horror at the most frightful dream of all; in which the "strange gentleman," their fellow-lodger, was pursuing her with a veil over his face, which just as he caught her fell off, and disclosed, horrible to relate, the face on the clock.
Edith started up as Helen convulsively clutched her, and exclaiming, "What in the world is the matter?" really thought Helen was going out of her mind when she replied, "That horrible clock;" and as she spoke, as if invoked, the clock began to strike: "One, two, three, four," and so on. "Is it never going to stop?" said Helen. Poor Edith, half asleep still, listened with her.
"Edith, I am almost certain that clock struck thirteen," said Helen in an awe-struck voice; and then they heard a door shut at the end of the passage.
"Helen, you have been dreaming, and you are only half awake now," said Edith. "It is not like you to waken me in this frightening way, please let me go to sleep."
"I am very sorry," said Helen penitently, and she too closed her eyes and tried hard to go to sleep, which of course she did, as soon as she left off trying, and had made up her mind to lie awake till daylight.
The morning broke clear and fresh; and, as Helen had said, things in general bore a very different aspect to that of the night before. Indoors, the quaint old house now looked simply picturesque, and Mrs. Jones the beau idéal of a cheery old hostess. Even the face of the clock, when Helen pointed it out to Edith, seemed to have lost its mocking grin, and to be merely bidding them good-morning, with a comical smile at the consternation it had awakened the night before.
Out-of-doors they soon turned their steps. There was no view from the house, but a short voyage of discovery quickly explained to them their locality. Black Nest Farm stood at the foot of a hill close on to the high road, or what passed for such in that hitherto little frequented neighbourhood. On the opposite side of the road but little was to be seen, as the meadows were soon lost in a thick belt of wood; but immediately behind the house was a tempting prospect, for there a little winding path led up the hill to one of the spots Helen and Edith most ardently desired to paint, and of which their friends had given them a glowing description. It was rather a long walk to the Black Lake, Mrs. Jones informed them, but their enthusiasm knew no bounds, and hardly permitted them to do justice to their breakfast of ham and eggs, home-made bread and home-churned butter. See them then starting on their expedition,—their painting materials, and some creature comforts in the shape of sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, safely packed on the pony's back, Griffith leading him and acting as guide. A pretty stiff pull it was, enthusiasm notwithstanding, and rather hard work for the little feet, sensibly shod in good strong boots it is true, but unaccustomed nevertheless to mountain scrambling. But at last their circuitous path brought them to the summit, and there a curious prospect broke upon them. They stood at the edge of the great Welsh tableland. There it stretched away before them, miles and miles beyond their view; a vast expanse of wild, brown moor, unrelieved by tree or shrub, but here and there dotted by great patches of what Edith at first sight took to be "lovely emerald moss". Treacherous loveliness, for it told, as they learnt from Griffith, of fearful bog-pits, down whose slimy sides once slipped no man or beast could ever regain firm ground.
"What a horrible death that would be," said Helen, shuddering, "far worse than regular drowning in clean water. It would be slow suffocation in nasty, dirty mud."
A few minutes' careful walking brought them in sight of the Black Lake, the special object of their excursion. And it certainly was well worth coming to see, if not to paint; probably too, better seen in the greyness of a late autumn day than in the summer sun, whose bright rays reflected on its surface would have little harmonised with its character of gloom and loneliness. The lake was equal to several acres in extent, but from where they stood could not all be seen, as its farther end was hidden by the undulations of the land. In colour it was a dull, leaden grey, and looking at it, one's mind spontaneously reverted to travellers' descriptions of the Dead Sea, for dead was essentially the word by which to describe it. There were no fish to be caught in it Griffith told them, and as for its depth he had never heard tell of any one's sounding it. The effect of the whole scene was very peculiar, and so Helen and Edith felt it to be, as they stood gazing at the leaden water and the great, apparently boundless moorland. It was difficult to realise that they were so far above the ordinary haunts of men, for there was nothing in that great plain to remind them of the existence even of hills and mountains, except a steady-blowing breeze of that peculiar freshness pertaining only to sea or mountain air. Pleasantly invigorating at first, but soon becoming too chilly to make one care to stand about, or, worse still, to sit, as our young ladies now prepared to do.