Aunt Priscilla had not left her locked and darkened room since she had entered it on Christmas morning. No one dared to tell her directly of Rhoda's spirit having come back to trouble and haunt the quiet homestead. But she could hear all that went on in the kitchen below; and in the daytime the neighbours were glad of any excuse to come to the haunted house, though after nightfall no one would venture out into the fold except old Nathan. The rough servant-girl and the ploughboy had both been to her door, and given her notice that they were going to leave; but she had not asked them for any reason. The last injury Rhoda could do to her was to make the house a terror and a talk in the country. And now, as she sat alone, brooding over the past, with no work filling the hard hands which were used to be so busy, she no longer thought of Rhoda with the bitterness of wrath. She remembered what a young girl she was, and how full of fancies, which made it easy for people to deceive her. How terrible must have been the girl's misery before she could drown herself in the sea! And there was no rest for her troubled spirit, even in death! She was not sleeping peacefully in the little churchyard down by the shore, where all their kinsfolk lay within sound of the sea by night and day. There was something awful to Aunt Priscilla in the thought of Rhoda's homeless and restless spirit wandering about the places where she had been an innocent and a happy child. Late on New Year's Eve Aunt Priscilla drew aside the curtain which had hung across her window since Christmas Day, and sat in the darkness gazing out into the field. In the house all was as silent as the grave, and out of doors there was the hush of night. A hoar-frost had fallen, and gave a glimmer of light, even where the shadows fell, when otherwise it would have been utter blackness. The waning moon hung in the dark sky, above a bank of thick and gloomy clouds. She could hear the distant undertone of the sea, and the murmuring of the many brooks running down the mountain slopes in the winter, for the cold was not yet sharp enough to freeze them. And she could hear a far-off house-dog barking, and the nearer clanking of the chains by which the cows were fastened to their mangers, and the loud ticking of the old clock in the kitchen below. It would very soon be midnight. She felt the chill of the keen air, and she shivered as she huddled her shawl closer about her; but it was not the cold that made her lips tremble and her heart throb painfully. She could fancy--oh, how easily!--that she saw Rhoda, as she had often seen her, tripping along the causeway, with her bonny, merry face, and her dancing feet. But she knew well it was only a trick her memory was playing. The fold lay all silent and deserted beneath her watchful eyes, with every door safely closed, and the gate at the far end locked. Everything was precisely the same as usual.