This evening, not unnaturally, she was full of it all. "I mind weel," she began in the solemn tone appropriate to the subject, "hearing my father tell what he saw, and he knew he had seen what meant evil to the place and to the Laird, and he grieved about it, indeed he did." "Was that when he saw a light?" asked Mrs. Dorriman. "It was a light and it was not a light, my dear, it was something of fire." "Tell me about it again, Christie. I get confused about it sometimes." "You see, my dear, the common folks, some of them have ghosts and see spirits, and so on, but the gentry, the real old gentry, they have a different kind of ghost, there are _things that happen_--you'll understand." At all events, Mrs. Dorriman understood what Christie meant to express, and even at that moment and time of unhappiness the idea presented to her of the superior ghosts bestowed upon the gentry made her smile. "Well, Christie, it may be so," she said, "but the idea is new to me." "It is not new to us, and it was not new to my father. I do not mean that spirits are different, though we all know that spirits take different shapes; but when the head of a house goes, or any misfortune comes nigh him, there will be strange things seen. My father saw these things--it has not been given to me to see them--perhaps so is best. My father had many dark hours, those that have these gifts must go through great anguish. I have seen him sitting up at night and looking wild--wild. I have heard him say strange things. It was awful...." "And about this fire?" asked Mrs. Dorriman, a little anxious to get home now the darkness was making the footpath difficult to see. "Ah," said Christie, "many and many a time I have heard that story. He was in his house, the house high up the hill under the wood, and was restless; the hour was coming upon him, and he could not breathe. He threw open the door and stepped out in the darkness. You'll mind the steep hill that went up to the house, and how the old house itself stood up away from everything?" Mrs. Dorriman made a gesture of assent. The recollection of her old home, and the way in which it had been sold to the first bidder, was inexpressibly bitter to her. She was depressed and sad, and felt as though she had small need of other and painful memories, on this, her last evening here. "From the east and the west, from the north and the south, gathered darkness--so black was the night that not a thing was to be seen--the hill where your father's house stood was but a shadow, and the lights in the windows shone out with a wonderful power.