Jim watched her as far as his dull brain was capable of watching, and he dimly understood that she was dying.

Both men, indeed, felt a sort of superstitious awe of her, she was so changed, so unearthly.

As for the story of the ghost, the old popular superstitions are almost dead in the Cumbrian mountains, and the shrewd north-country peasant is in many places quite as scornfully ready to sacrifice his ghosts to the Time Spirit as any 'bold bad' haunter of scientific associations could wish him to be.

But in a few of the remoter valleys they still linger, though beneath the surface.

Either of the Backhouses, or Mary in her days of health, would have suffered many things rather than allow a stranger to suppose they placed the smallest credence in the story of Bleacliff Tarn.