Our house was situated on a lonely moor in the north of England, close upon the bleak border--a dismal neighborhood, savage, cold, and desolate. It was built so far back as the reign of Richard II., and with its flanking walls, crumbling on all sides into ruin, and its paved court-yards, covered a considerable area. Most of the apartments were large and gloomy, and hung with arras of so great an age, that the colors had grown dim, and the thread in many places appeared to be dropping into powder. Long corridors and smaller rooms ran round the quadrangle; and as the uses for which this huge pile was designed by its founders had long since passed away with the bands of retainers and extravagant pomp that distinguished the days of feudal hospitality and royal progresses, only a small part of it was kept up in an inhabitable condition by my mother. Unfortunately for my after life, the part so preserved lay in the very centre of the mansion, approachable only by dark passages, utterly obscure at night, and barely lighted in the day-time by narrow latticed windows, such as we see indented in the thick walls of old cloisters. To reach the inhabited rooms it was necessary to make many windings, to twine up a short spiral stair that led from the outer court, and to traverse two sides of the quadrangle. This was always a fearful thing to me, which use by no means deprived of its terrors. There were many legends whispered from one to another in the winter nights of revolting crimes which had taken place there in former times, and which rose re-embodied before me as I cowered past the spots where they were said to have been enacted. The aspect of the dreary building, within and without, by day and night, made it all real. If the moon shone brightly into the passages, strange shadows were discernible flitting across the floor or creeping up the walls; and as I involuntarily glanced through shattered doors and inner casements, remnants of armor hanging about, and fragments of tapestry fluttering against the windows, and other relics of a 'sheeted ancestry,' would seem to glide out of the darkness, and fill the open spaces with forms swaying and undulating before my eyes. I remember how my limbs used to totter under me as I tried not to see these sights, and crept on, stifling the fear that was distilling drops of agony over my body by the greater fear of uttering a cry, lest the slightest noise might bring worse horrors round me. I am speaking of my childhood--and children will understand me.