If it hadn't been for the Captain's insistence that the crying by night wasn't of this earth, and Jenny's contrary declarations that it was her father's voice we could hear echoing so piteously through the building, though I noticed she never let fall a word to that effect before her father, if it hadn't been for these hints I might have been deceived into thinking it merely the old wailing I had been used to hearing, and which now in my wisdom I ascribed entirely to the wind in the secret passage when the door was open. For in that twisting corridor the least breath could play like the note of an organ. But once the madness did break out. It was one evening when the wind had risen more tempestuously than usual. I was kneeling in front of the fire telling Jenny a story, or rather weaving into a disconnected tale the wailing and sobbing of the wind as it hung in lingering eddies about odd corners of the ruined dwelling. Each gust that came racing over the moors was another voice from the world of spirits, and I interpreted its message of woe and lamentation much as my father had used to do. "Hark now!" I said, "that's a soldier. He was killed in battle shouting out his war-cry. And there! that's a hunter. Hear him; 'Hallooo! Hallooo!' And there's a mother calling to her baby. They stole it from her, and she heard it sobbing, sobbing, because it wanted her. And she reached her hands out for it, but they thrust her away. You hear her crying: 'Awaay! Awaay!' And, ah! listen! Two, three, four, five; all howling together. They're chasing some one. Listen! On, on, on! He's crying for mercy. Their hands are at his throat. He feels their breath behind him. And how they're laughing: 'Ahaa! Ahaa!'... Oh, Jenny!..." I broke off, for at that moment, as though the clamouring wind had burst into the very room, there was a fearful howl of insane laughter, and the Captain sprang at me and seized me about the throat, shaking me like a rat. "Laughing, are they?" he shouted frenziedly. "Laughing! Ahaa! And they've caught him, have they? Yes, by God, caught him!" And with that he flung me away from him, crouching back from me like an animal preparing to spring.