Accordingly Mrs. Darling made her way along the corridor. Crouching against the nursery-door, as she turned the corner, was what at first looked like a huge black balloon. It proved to be the petticoats of her daughter, who appeared to be listening to something in the nursery. "Charlotte!" Mrs. St. John lifted her scared face: a white face, not so much of terror as of some great anguish, with wild eyes gazing from it. Softly rising, she spoke in a whisper. "I can hear his cries--_his_. I heard them last night, all night long." Mrs. Darling's heart leaped, as the saying runs, into her mouth. Was _she_ going mad--was every one going mad? "Listen! There it is again!" "Charlotte, my dear child, you cannot be well this morning. These troubles have unhinged you. When you----" Mrs. Darling suddenly stopped, and began to feel a little "unhinged" herself. There certainly was a sound within the room; a repetition of faint whining or moaning. "I knew they could never take him out of it!" whispered Mrs. St. John. "Hark! But his cries were louder then." Mrs. Darling looked at her. Could she be succumbing to superstitious fears? Mrs. Darling hardly thought it possible, being herself so very practical a woman, in contradistinction to an imaginative one. She no more believed in ghosts than she did in the spirits recently become fashionable: and she opened the nursery-door very gingerly and peeped in. It was the dog Brave. Poor Brave must have found his way into the room on the previous day, on the removal of the coffin, and had been shut in ever since. Not barking, not making any noise to attract attention, simply sitting there under the trestles, whining and crying. There had been some trouble with Brave since the death: he would find his way into the corridor, and there howl and moan. "See, Charlotte!" said Mrs. Darling, in reassuring tones. "Poor dumb creature!" Deeming it well that her daughter _should_ see, as the most effectual antidote to any such fears as those alluded to above, she gently took her arm to pull her forward. Charlotte drew back in sudden fear. "I _can't_ look!" she gasped. "You dare not force me! Is he walking about with the lighted church?" "Oh, Charlotte, do, do just glance in! You are not yourself, I see"--and poor Mrs. Darling looked as terrified as her, as _she_ was looking at the door. "It is only poor Brave; he must have been shut in here." She threw the door open, went in, and drove out the dog. Mrs. St. John stood against the wall as it passed her, carefully avoiding all sight of the chamber. Her mood changed to anger when she saw Brave. "I gave orders that he should not be allowed to enter the house--that he should be kept chained up in the stables--sent away--sold--anything. How dare they disobey me!"