"Ay, sir, but--begging your pardon--it's a fine thing to be able to say ye come fro' Ling Crag: there's a sort o' respect goes with th' name in fowks's minds, an' we stay on here fro' generation to generation, seeing as how we could nobbut exchange for th' war. An' that maks houses scarce, like." The stranger, beginning to understand his man better, laughed easily. "I shall try to be worthy of the honour, landlord, if you'll only find me the house." The host rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then slapped his thigh with a great show of impromptu delight. "Now that's queer; all th' time ye've been talking I niver once thought o' Wynyates Hall. Why, it's just th' place for ye, sir; two score acre o' shooiting, an' a regular old-fashioned sort o' house--just such as th' painter chaps come for to paint." "That sounds all right. How far is it from here?" "A mile an' a bittock; an' a good highroad from there to here. First ye pass Scartop Water--as I was telling ye about--an' then ye come right to Wynyates Hall, standing i' a bit o' wood of its own, wi' th' moors just aboon. Oh, ay, it's a grand place, is Wynyates!" "Any houses near?" "Well, there's what we call Wynyates hamlet a quarter-mile away, but it's nowt mich to crack on--just a two or three cottages an' a farm or so." "It is to let, is it, this Wynyates Hall?" "Ay, it's to let right enow, sir. But I mind me there's some queer tales abroad; happen ye're not feared o' ghosts?" A shadow passed over the stranger's face, and seemed more at home there than his previous air of cheery carelessness. "Ghosts?" he muttered. "I've got too many of my own to be afraid of other people's." His face cleared again, and he laughed a denial at his host. But the grizzled old man shook his head doubtfully. "Best not laugh at 'em, sir, an' that's my belief," he said gravely. "There's been some fearful goings-on up at Wynyates. Two brothers there war lived up at th' Hall, an' they'd been trained in a school ye don't find i' these ower-eddicated days. Ay, they war of th' owd breed, for sure; as lusty an' devil-paced limbs as ye'd light on th' countryside through." "You seem to be rather proud of them, if one may judge from the look in your eyes," said the stranger, breaking into a reflective pause on the part of his host. Boniface chuckled. "Well, the fact is, sir, they war a tidy pair at th' poaching, an' my heart allus did go out to a poacher, God bless 'em! I war fifty, an' they war nobbut a bit th' wrang side o' thirty i' those days, but I could teach 'em nowt--nowt at all. Sakes alive, they hadn't no call to poach! They'd plenty o' brass an' land o' their own; but it war just i' th' blood, so to say, an' they did it for plain love o' sport. Ay, they war likely chaps, them two." "And what was the end of them? End there must have been, or Wynyates would not be to let."