‘Is that the house?’ said Cytherea expectantly, catching sight of a grey gable between the trees, and losing it again.

’No; that’s the old manor-house—­or rather all that’s left of it.  The Aldycliffes used to let it sometimes, but it was oftener empty.  ’Tis now divided into three cottages.  Respectable people didn’t care to live there.’

‘Why didn’t they?’

’Well, ’tis so awkward and unhandy.  You see so much of it has been pulled down, and the rooms that are left won’t do very well for a small residence.  ’Tis so dismal, too, and like most old houses stands too low down in the hollow to be healthy.’

‘Do they tell any horrid stories about it?’

‘No, not a single one.’

‘Ah, that’s a pity.’

’Yes, that’s what I say.  ’Tis jest the house for a nice ghastly hair-on-end story, that would make the parish religious.  Perhaps it will have one some day to make it complete; but there’s not a word of the kind now.  There, I wouldn’t live there for all that.  In fact, I couldn’t.  O no, I couldn’t.’

‘Why couldn’t you?’

‘The sounds.’

‘What are they?’

’One is the waterfall, which stands so close by that you can hear that there waterfall in every room of the house, night or day, ill or well.  ‘Tis enough to drive anybody mad:  now hark.’

He stopped the horse.  Above the slight common sounds in the air came the unvarying steady rush of falling water from some spot unseen on account of the thick foliage of the grove.

‘There’s something awful in the timing o’ that sound, ain’t there, miss?’

’When you say there is, there really seems to be.  You said there were two—­what is the other horrid sound?’

’The pumping-engine.  That’s close by the Old House, and sends water up the hill and all over the Great House.  We shall hear that directly. . . .  There, now hark again.’

From the same direction down the dell they could now hear the whistling creak of cranks, repeated at intervals of half-a-minute, with a sousing noise between each:  a creak, a souse, then another creak, and so on continually.

’Now if anybody could make shift to live through the other sounds, these would finish him off, don’t you think so, miss?  That machine goes on night and day, summer and winter, and is hardly ever greased or visited.  Ah, it tries the nerves at night, especially if you are not very well; though we don’t often hear it at the Great House.’

’That sound is certainly very dismal.  They might have the wheel greased.  Does Miss Aldclyffe take any interest in these things?’

’Well, scarcely; you see her father doesn’t attend to that sort of thing as he used to.  The engine was once quite his hobby.  But now he’s getten old and very seldom goes there.’

‘How many are there in family?’

‘Only her father and herself.  He’s a’ old man of seventy.’