"Indeed and I do, sir. It's not so long ago."
"Was anyone of the servants up in the north wing that evening at dusk, walking about the passages there?"
"Mercy be good to us!" ejaculated the old woman, sinking on a chair.
"Now do be sensible!" cried the Doctor, testily. "I ask you a simple question: can't you answer it? Was either of the girls--say Eliza, or that other one--what's her name?--Phemie--was either of them in the north wing that evening, prancing about it?--What in the world are you twittering at?"
"I can't hear that wing spoke of without going into a twitter," said Dorothy, with a half sob. "As to the girls being up there--no, sir, you may rely on that. Not one of them would go up there at dusk to save her life: nor alone by daylight either. Was anything seen there that night, sir, or heard?"
"Never you mind that now: if there was, it's over and done with. Then, so far as you know, none of the household went up?"
"That I could answer with my life."
"Well, good-evening, Mrs. Stone; there's nothing to be afraid of. Take a drop of brandy yourself," he kindly added.
"There's more to be afraid of in this house than the world knows of, Dr. Spreckley--and has been for some time past. It's an uncanny place--though I dare not say as much before my husband. As to that north wing"--she broke off with a shiver. "The other housemaids left because of what they saw and heard there: and these are getting as frightened as they were."
Down sat Dorothy as the surgeon went out, and flung her apron over her face in a kind of despair. Naturally superstitious, the events in the Hall had but rendered her more so. She lived a life of fear and trembling, believing that if by ill-luck the ghost--Katherine Keen's--appeared to herself some unlucky night, she should die of it. How greatly these questions of Dr. Spreckley had augmented her terrified discomfort, she would not have liked to confess.