brown horse. "I must take you with me, too," he muttered. "I shall never see her or the child again. It is better so; I hope she won't be long." And he waited in sulky silence.

Suddenly there was the cry of a human being in pain. The light was extinguished, and the mists closed thicker round the ruined building; it might be to hide the sight within the room. Could the wails only have spoken they would have shouted "Murder!" with most miraculous voice. But the age of miracles being past, the walls were dumb, and there was no clamour to greet the horror of this deed done in darkness. But the mists wrapped themselves round the place of death, and a profound silence shut down on the desolate country.

It was broken at last by the sound of light footsteps. Along the disused road a woman carrying a child in her arms tore along at a furious rate. She did not know where she was going; she had no goal. All that she desired was to get away from the thing which lay in the darkness of that poor room. Horror was behind her; danger before. And she ran on, on through the mists and the gloom, pursued by the Furies. Like hounds on the track, they drove her along the lonely roads until the mists swallowed her up; and these, growing ever more dense, blotted out the woman, blotted out the country, blotted out the Turnpike House. But what they could not blot out was that silent room where a dead man lay. Better had they done so; better had they obliterated that evidence of evil from the face of the earth. But what had been done in the darkness had yet to be shewn in the light; and then--but the woman fled on wearied feet, fled, ever fled through the gloom, and the friendly mists covered her escape.

And so did the ruined Turnpike-House become possessed of its legend. For many a long year the horror of it was discussed beside winter fires. The place was haunted, and the ghost had walked first upon that very night, when the woman, bearing the child, had fled away into the darkness.

 

 

 

 

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