The interior of the tiny thatched cottage was scrupulously clean and neat, as they nearly all are in the valley, but barer and more scantily furnished than most of them. No photographs or pictures decorated the white-washed walls, no scraps of carpet or matting hid the red-brick floor. The Monks were evidently of the poorest. An old piece of faded curtain had been hung from a rope between the chimney-piece and the door to shield the patient from the draught. He sat in a stiff wooden arm-chair near the fire, drawing his breath laboriously. "He was better now," said his wife, a nurse as old and as frail-looking as himself. "Nights was the worst." His shoulders were bent, his hair white with age, his withered features almost as coarse and as unshapely as the poor clothes he wore. The mask had been rough-hewn, to begin with; time and exposure had further defaced it. No gleam of intellectual life transpierced and illumined all. It was the face of an animal--ugly, ignorant, honest, patient. As I looked at it there came over me a rush of the pity I have so often felt for this suffering of age in poverty--so unpicturesque, so unwinning, to shallow sight so unpathetic--and I put out my hand and let it rest for a moment on his own, knotted with rheumatism, stained and seamed with toil. Then he looked up at me from under his shaggy brows with haggard, wistful eyes, and gasped: "It's hard work, sir; it's hard work." And I went out into the sunshine, feeling that I had heard the epitome of his life. That night Mrs. Mallet surpassed herself by her rendering of a menu, especially composed by Atherley for the delectation of their guest. Their pains were not wasted. The Canon's commendation of each course--and we talked of little else, I remember, from soup to dessert--was as discriminating as it was warm. "I am glad you approve of our cook, Uncle," said Lady Atherley in the drawing-room afterwards, "for she is only a stop-gap. Our own cook left us quite suddenly the other day, and we had such difficulty in finding this one to take her place. No one can imagine how inconvenient it is to have a haunted house." "My dear Jane, you don't mean to tell me you are afraid of ghosts?" "Oh no, Uncle." "And I am sure your husband is not?" "No; but unfortunately cooks are." "Eh! what?" Then Lady Atherley willingly repeated the story of her troubles.