“I suppose,” I said, “there must be some back way to the village or to the farmhouse under this bank, though there seems no room for a path?” “Why do you ask?” she said, looking at me with a smile. “Because I always hear someone passing along--I imagine down there. The steps are very distinct. Don’t you hear them now? It has puzzled me a good deal, for I cannot make out where the path can be.” She smiled again, with a meaning in her smile, and looked at me steadily, listening, as I was. And then, after a pause, she said, “That is what you are asking for. If we did not hear them it would make us unhappy. Did you never hear why this was called the Lady’s Walk?” When she said these words I was conscious of an odd enough change in my sensations--nay, I should say in my very sense of hearing, which was the one appealed to. I had heard the sound often, and, after looking back at first to see who it was and seeing no one, had made up my mind that the steps were on some byway out of sight and came from below. Now my hearing changed, and I could not understand how I had ever thought anything else; the steps were on a level with us, by our side--as if some third person were accompanying us along the avenue. I am no believer in ghosts, nor the least superstitious, so far as I had ever been aware (more than everybody is), but I felt myself get out of the way with great celerity and a certain thrill of curious sensation. The idea of rubbing shoulders with something unseen gave me a shock in spite of myself. “Ah,” said Charlotte, “it gives you an--unpleasant feeling. I forgot you are not used to it like me.” “I am tolerably well used to it, for I have heard it often,” I said. It was cowardly to get to the other side, but I fear I did so with an involuntary movement. Then I laughed, which I felt to be altogether out of place and fictitious, and said, “No doubt there is some very easy explanation of it--some vibration or echo. The science of acoustics clears up many mysteries.” “There is no explanation,” Chatty said almost angrily. “She has walked here far longer than anyone can remember. It is an ill sign for us Campbells when she goes away. She was the eldest daughter, like me; and I think she has got to be our guardian angel. There is no harm going to happen as long as she is here. Listen to her!” she cried, standing still with her hand raised. The low sun shone full on her, catching her brown hair, the lucid clearness of her brown eyes, her cheeks so clear and soft, in colour a little summer-brown too. I stood and listened with a something of excited feeling which I could not control. If I had followed my first impulse I am not sure that I should not have bolted through the shrubbery; but of course I did not. And the sound of this third person, whose steps were not to be mistaken though she was unseen, made my heart beat. It was no doubt the utmost folly; for there must be an explanation for it in nature: of that I could not doubt for a moment.