"The master's
dead," says Dalton--and so he was, signs on it.
'After the turn she got by what she seen in the orchard, when she came
to know the truth of what it was, Jinny Cresswell, you may be sure, did
not stay there an hour longer than she could help: and she began to take
notice of things she did not mind before--such as when she went into the
big bed-room over the hall, that the lord used to sleep in, whenever she
went in at one door the other door used to be pulled to very quick, as
if some one avoiding her was getting out in haste; but the thing that
frightened her most was just this--that sometimes she used to find a
long straight mark from the head to the foot of her bed, as if 'twas
made by something heavy lying there, and the place where it was used to
feel warm--as if--whoever it was--they only left it as she came into the
room.
'But the worst of all was poor Kitty Haplin, the young woman that died
of what she seen. Her mother said it was how she was kept awake all the
night with the walking about of some one in the next room, tumbling
about boxes, and pulling over drawers, and talking and sighing to
himself, and she, poor thing, wishing to go asleep, and wondering who it
could be, when in he comes, a fine man, in a sort of loose silk
morning-dress, an' no wig, but a velvet cap on, and to the windy with
him quiet and aisy, and she makes a turn in the bed to let him know
there was some one there, thinking he'd go away, but instead of that,
over he comes to the side of the bed, looking very bad, and says
something to her--but his speech was thick and choakin' like a dummy's
that id be trying to spake--and she grew very frightened, and says she,
'I ask your honour's pardon, Sir, but I can't hear you right,' and with
that he stretches up his neck nigh out of his cravat, turning his face
up towards the ceiling, and--grace between us and harm!--his throat was
cut across, and wide open; she seen no more, but dropped in a dead faint
in the bed, and back to her mother with her in the morning, and she
never swallied bit or sup more, only she just sat by the fire holding
her mother's hand, crying and trembling, and peepin' over her shoulder,
and starting with every sound, till she took the fever and died, poor
thing, not five weeks after.
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