"This is the window," said she. "You see there's a pane broken. If you could get on to the window-sill, you could get your hand in and undo the hasp, and----" "And you?" "Oh, you'll let me in by the kitchen door." I did it. My conscience called me a burglar--in vain. Was it not my own, or as good as my own house? I let her in at the back door. We walked through the big dark kitchen where the old three-legged pot towered large on the hearth, and the old spits and firedogs still kept their ancient place. Then through another kitchen where red rust was making its full meal of a comparatively modern range. Then into the great hall, where the old armour and the buff-coats and round-caps hang on the walls, and where the carved stone staircases run at each side up to the gallery above. The long tables in the middle of the hall were scored by the knives of the many who had eaten meat there--initials and dates were cut into them. The roof was groined, the windows low-arched. "Oh, but what a place!" said she; "this must be much older than the rest of it----" "Evidently. About 1300, I should say." "Oh, let us explore the rest," she cried; "it is really a comfort not to have a guide, but only a person like you who just guesses comfortably at dates. I should hate to be told _exactly_ when this hall was built." We explored ball-room and picture gallery, white parlour and library. Most of the rooms were furnished--all heavily, some magnificently--but everything was dusty and faded. It was in the white parlour, a spacious panelled room on the first floor, that she told me the ghost story, substantially the same as my porter's tale, only in one respect different. "And so, just as she was leaving this very room--yes, I'm sure it's this room, because the woman at the inn pointed out this double window and told me so--just as the poor lovers were creeping out of the door, the cruel father came quickly out of some dark place and killed them both. So now they haunt it." "It is a terrible thought," said I gravely. "How would you like to live in a haunted house?" "I couldn't," she said quickly. "Nor I; it would be too----" my speech would have ended flippantly, but for the grave set of her features. "I wonder who _will_ live here?" she said. "The owner is just dead. They say it is an awful house, full of ghosts. Of course one is not afraid now"--the sunlight lay golden and soft on the dusty parquet of the floor--"but at night, when the wind wails, and the doors creak, and the things rustle, oh, it must be awful!" "I hear the house has been left to two people, or rather one is to have the house, and the other a sum of money," said I. "It's a beautiful house, full of beautiful things, but I should think at least one of the heirs would rather have the money." "Oh yes, I should think so. I wonder whether the heirs know about the ghost? The lights can be seen from the inn, you know, at twelve o'clock, and they see the ghost in white at the window."