Sir John asked no more, and they entered the gateway of a house at the end of the court, which had once been a fair dwelling, but now the door hung by one hinge, and the windows were battered out. They entered the hall; tattered hangings drooped in fragments from the walls, beetles and spiders had their home amidst the rotten wainscotting, woodlice swarmed in the bannisters of the ancient staircase, the balustrade was partly broken away, the stairs were rotten. “And is _she_ here?” said Sir John again. “Even so,” was the reply; “tread carefully, the staircase will bear thee in places only.” The ceiling, which had been moulded in patterns, had fallen away, and hideous joists and beams were disclosed as they ascended. Then they heard a faint moan of pain, and a voice said, “Dying, dying, left all alone to die; Mother of Mercy, aid a sinful child of Eve.” “Peace, daughter, I bring him thou seekest.” The being whom he called “daughter” was an aged crone who had seen some seventy summers, and was now fast dying of decay; pains in all her joints, weakness in all her senses, toothless, wrinkled, blear-eyed, yet with the remains of a beauty long past, in the high outlines of her features. Sir John gazed upon her. “Art thou Madge of Luckland?” he said. “Thou knowest me by the signet; it has more power to convince thee than this face; go, good Father Christopher, go,” she said to the priest, “and when I have said that which must be said to this good knight, ha! ha! I will finish my shrift to thee.” “Shall I bid any of the neighbours come to thee when he is gone?” “He will summon them; I would not be long alone in this haunted house; there be ghosts I tell thee; there be awful figures with faces that wither the eyeballs and blanch the hair, which troop about these halls of the forgotten dead; but it is daylight now, and I fear them not.” “Madge,” said the priest, “thou wilt soon be as one of those ghosts thyself: thy poor tabernacle of clay is falling fast into ruins like a child’s house of cards, which a touch overturns; soon they will carry thee to the charnel house, and direly will thy poor soul burn in its purgatory, or haunt, if permitted, these scenes of forgotten crime, unless thou dost repent and make atonement.” “Father, I _will_; am I not on the point of doing so? go, leave me with this good knight: why, he was once my foster son.” “And has he left thee to _want_, like this? My son, God deal with thee as thou dost deal justly by her; she has little time yet wherein thou mayst make amends for the past to one, who, if she speaks truth, suckled thee at her breast.” The priest departed, and Sir John sank into a crazy chair by the couch of the old woman. A faded coverlet was upon it, whereon was wrought the history of Cain and Abel; there were four posts supporting a canopy, but one post drooped, and the whole threatened to come down together. “Speak, mother, why hast thou sent for me at last? or why didst thou not send before?”