"I wish it was inside it--we'd soon stop it by wringing all their necks," cried she. "You can listen," she added, suddenly going into the hall and flinging wide every door that opened from it and led to the different passages and rooms. "Go to any part of the house you like, and hearken for yourselves, young gentlemen." Tod laughed at the suggestion. The passages were all still and cold, and there was nothing to hear. Taking up the candle, she lighted us to the front-door. Outside stood the woman-servant Eunice, a basket on her arm, and just about to ring, Mrs. Radcliffe inquired if she had heard any noise. "Only the shrieking birds up there," she answered readily. "They be in full cry to-night." "They've been startling these gentlemen finely." "There bain't nothing to be startled at," said the woman, roughly, turning a look of contempt upon us. "If I was the master I'd shoot as many as I could get at; and if that didn't get rid of 'em, I'd cut the trees down." "They make a queerer noise than any birds I ever heard before," said Tod, standing his ground to say it. "They does," assented the woman. "That queer, that some folks believes it's the shrieks o' the skeleton on the gibbet." Pleasant! When I and Tod had to pass within a few yards of its corner. The posts of the old gibbet were there still, but the skeleton had mouldered away long ago. A bit of chain, some few inches long, adhered to its fastening in the post still, and rattled away on windy nights. "What donkeys we were, Johnny, not to know birds' cries when we heard them!" exclaimed Tod, as we tumbled over the gate and went flying across the field. "Hark! Listen! There it is again!" There it was. The same despairing sort of wail, faintly rising and dying on the air. Tod stood in hushed silence. "Johnny, I believe that's a human cry!--I could almost fancy," he went on, "that it is speaking words. No bird, that ever I met with, native or foreign, could make the like." It died away. But still occurred the obvious question, What was it, and where did it come from? With nothing but the empty air above and around us, that was difficult to answer. "It's not in the trees--I vow it," said Tod; "it's not inside the Torr; it can't rise up from under the ground. I say, Johnny, is it a case of ghost?" The wailing arose again as he spoke, as if to reprove him for his levity. I'd rather have met a ghost; ay, and a real ghost; than have carried away that sound to haunt me. We tore home as fast as our heels could take us, and told of the night's adventure. After the pater had blown us up for being late, he treated us to a dose of ridicule. Human cries, indeed? Ghosts and witches? I might be excused, he said, being a muff; but Joe must be just going back to his childhood. That settled Tod. Of all disagreeable things he most hated to be ridiculed. "It must have been the old birds in those trees, after all, Johnny," said he, as we went up to bed. "I think the moon makes people fanciful."