An hour of deep sleep from pure weariness both of mind and body, and I awoke with every fibre full of nervous life. The moon was high in the south-east, and three narrow stripes of lozenged light fell upon the old oak floor. Although my uncle had left the gable where the windows faced the setting sun, he still kept to the western wing. The house, which was built in the reign of Henry the Eighth, covered the site and in some parts embodied the relics of a much more ancient structure. The plan was very simple, at least as regarded the upstair rooms. From east to west ran one long corridor, crossed at right angles, in the centre and near the ends, by three gable passages. Although there were so many servants, not half the rooms were occupied: all the best bedrooms had been empty many a year. No festivities had filled them since my father’s days. Gloom and terror still hung over the eastern part, where he had been so foully murdered. In most of the downstair windows along the front of the house, the rickety lattice of diamond panes had been replaced by clear plate-glass, but the old hall, and the corridor, and some of the gable windows still retained their gorgeous tints and heraldry. As the shadows of the mullions stole upon my counterpane, there began to creep across my mind uneasy inklings of the ghost. A less imaginative man than William Edwards, I who had often enjoyed his escort, knew well there could not be. As for Job Leyson I could not tell with what creative powers his mind might be endowed; but--to judge from physiognomy--a light ring snaffle would hold them. Thinking, with less and less complacence, of this apparition story, and the red legend which lay beneath it, for the spectral lady was believed to be a certain Beatrice Vaughan, daughter of the Cavalier who perceived the moss-light, and heiress of the house 200 years ago--thinking of this, I say, with more and more of flutter, I sat up in the bed and listened. My uncle’s thick irregular breathing, the play of an ivy-leaf on the mullion, the half-hour struck by the turret-clock, were all the sounds I heard; except that my heart, so listless and desponding, was re-asserting some right to throb for its own safety. With my hand upon it, I listened for another minute, resolving if I heard nothing more to make a great nest in the pillows--I always want three at least--and shut both ears to destiny. But there came, before the minute passed, a low, long, hollow sound, an echo of trembling expectation. In a moment I leaped from the bed; though I had never heard it before, I knew it could only be the bloodhound’s cautious warning.