“Under the east window, my Lady; then it moved across the flower-garden, and down to the shore beneath the big rocks.” “What was it like, Tate?” “'T was like a funeral 'coyne' first, Miss, when ye heerd it far away in the mountain; and then it rose, and swelled fuller and stronger, till it swam all round me, and at last died away to the light, soft cry of an infant.” “Exactly, Tate; it was Captain Forester sighing. I never heard a better description in my life.” “Ah! don't laugh, my Lady,--don't now, Miss Helen, dear. I never knew luck nor grace come of laughing when the warnin' was come. 'T is the Captain, there, looks sad and thoughtful,--the Heavens bless him for it! He knows 'tis no time for laughing.” Forester might have accepted the eulogy in better part, perhaps, had he understood it; but as it was, he turned abruptly about, and asked Lady Eleanor for an explanation of the whole mystery. “Tate thinks he has heard--” “Thinks!” interrupted the old man, with a sorrowful gesture of both hands. “Musha! I'd take the Gospel on it; I heard it as plain as I hear your Ladyship now.” Lady Eleanor smiled, and went on--“the cry of the Banshee, that dreadful warning which, in the superstition of the country, always betokens death, or at least some great calamity, to the house it is heard to wail over.” “A polite attention, to say the least,” said Forester, smiling sarcastically, “of the witch or fairy or whatever it is, to announce to people an approaching misfortune. And has every cabin got its own Ban--what do you call it?” “The cabins has none,” said Tate, with a loot of severe reproach, the most remote possible from his habitual air of deference; “'tis only the ouldest and most ancient families, like his honor the Knight's, has a Banshee. But it's no use talking; I see nobody believes me.” “Yes, Tate, I do,” cried Helen, with an earnestness of manner, either really felt, or assumed to gratify the poor old man's superstitious veneration; “just tell me how you heard it first.” “Like that!” whispered Tate, as he held up his hand to enforce silence; and at the same instant a low, plaintive cry was heard, as if beneath the very window. The accent was not of pain or suffering, but of melancholy so soft, so touching, and yet so intense, that it stilled every voice within the room, where now each long-drawn breath was audible. There is a lurking trait of superstition in every human heart, which will resist, at some one moment or other, every effort of reason and every scoff of irony. An instant before, and Forester was ready to jest with the old man's terrors, and now his own spirit was not all devoid of them. The feeling was, however, but of a moment's duration; suspicion again assumed its sway, and, seizing his hat, he rushed from the room, to search the flower-garden and examine every spot where any one might lie concealed.