“And that’s more than the ears ever hear tell of,” said the old lady; “but oh, to live for years and never hear that without thinking it may be them--never to see beggar bairns on a roadside without thinking it may be them--to go watching and waiting and wondering through your life, starting at every noise, trembling at every sudden sound--God help us! what is that--what is that?” she cried, suddenly rising to her feet. “Oh, Lady Eskside!” cried the other, rising too, and grasping her hand with a nervous shudder; “it is nothing--nothing but the storm.” The old lady dropped heavily into her seat again. “Sometimes I cannot bear it,” she cried--“sometimes I cannot bear it! I get half-crazed at every sound.” “The wind is very high,” said Mary, soothing her, “and the Esk is running wild over the linn, and the storm tearing the trees. It must be the equinoctial gales. If you only heard them as we do, roaring and raging over the sea!” For a few minutes the two ladies sat quite still holding each other’s hands. The storm outside was wild enough to impose silence upon those within. The trees were tossing about as if in an agony, against the pale whiteness of the sky; now and then a deeper note would come into the tumult of sound, the hoarse roar of the river, which grew rapidly into a torrent at the foot of the hill; and then the wind would rush, like the avenging spirit through the bleeding wood in the Inferno, tearing off the limbs of the trees, which shrieked and cried in unavailing torment. The last lingering rays of twilight had disappeared out of the sky, the last gleams of firelight were sinking too--even the mirrors had sunk out of sight upon the walls, and nothing but the large windows filled with the mournful pallor of the sky, and Mary’s pale face, a spot of congenial whiteness, were even partially visible. After this story, and while they sat silent, conscious of the strange stillness within, and commotion outside, was it their imaginations that represented to them another sound striking into the roar of the storm? Lady Eskside did not start again as she had done before, but she grasped Mary’s hand tightly; while Mary, for her part, sat bolt-upright in her chair, thinking to herself that it must be imagination, that it was a mere trick of excitement which filled her ears with echoes of fanciful knockings. Who could be knocking at this hour? or how could such a sound be heard even, in the onslaught of the storm?