'I love that collie,' said my aunt; 'he ought to have had a headstone with "Faithful unto Death" engraved on it.' 'So he should have had, my dear,' my uncle assented, 'had we been here at the time. Well, Charles, the point is that several people have thought----' Here my aunt moved a little impatiently in her chair. 'Have been quite sure,' corrected my uncle, 'that they have seen the dog or its wraith, but no one has yet seen the shepherd, I believe. Your aunt last autumn saw the dog on the top of the wall that surrounds the mausoleum, jumping up and down and growling dreadfully, and last night our stableman--"Geordie"--a disabled pitman, was chivvied by him across the park from close beside the mausoleum. What can you make of that?' questioned my uncle, the humorous look again in his eye. 'Did Geordie run away?' I inquired magisterially. 'He ran,' replied my uncle, smiling, 'as he expressed it himself, "like a whippet or a hunted hare."' 'Did you run, Aunt Mary?' I inquired next. 'I daren't, Charlie, to tell you the truth. If I had begun to run I should have screamed, so I just walked on as fast as ever I could.' 'Then it didn't follow you?' I inquired. 'No,' said my aunt, shaking her head; 'it seemed to me like one of those savage, tied-up mongrels that guard the carts of carriers in the town on market days.' 'The curious thing,' interrupted my uncle, who was a keen antiquary, 'is that the dog should haunt the mausoleum, since it contains not his master, but "Hell-fire Dick," the last of the Norman Fitzalans--and so named not only because he belonged to the famous club, but also, as I gather from tradition, because of his language and complexion. 'Had he been alive no shepherd had dared trespass in his park, and no dog would have come out alive. So it is curious they should forgather after death.' My aunt here interposed. 'Are you not afraid for your uncle's orthodoxy?' she asked of me, 'when he shows himself so sceptical?' My uncle, discovering that he had put himself at a disadvantage, now suggested that I should--as a lawyer--investigate the matter and give my opinion upon it. 'Willingly,' I replied, laughing. 'The chief witness, I take it, will be your henchman, the redoubtable "Geordie," aunt being prosecutor, the wraith the defendant, and you, uncle, the sceptical public.' This being arranged, the subject was dropped, and my uncle gave me further information about the Fitzalans. 'Undoubtedly they were Normans,' said he, 'but descent has been so frequently in the female line that when my Lord Richard--"Hell-fire Dick"--died, he had perhaps no more Norman blood in him than you have. There was this one virtue about him, that he loved the old abode and possessions of his ancestors passionately, and when he died he left directions that he should be buried in the mausoleum on the knoll in the park whence the sea stands out clearly behind the castle.