It's a new thing for him to sit up drinking his glass of grog in the parlour by himself." The new habit seemed to grow upon Mr.Whitelaw more rapidly after that visit of the stranger's.

He took to sitting up till midnight--an awful hour in a farm-house; and Ellen generally found the spirit-bottle empty in the morning.

Night after night, he went to bed soddened with drink.
Once, when his kinswoman made some feeble remonstrance with him about this change in his habits, he told her savagely to hold her tongue--he could afford to drink as much as he pleased--he wasn't likely to come upon _her_ to pay for what he took.

As for his wife, she unhappily cared nothing what he did.

He could not become more obnoxious to her than he had been from the first hour of her acquaintance with him, let him do what he would.
Little by little, finding no other explanation possible, Mrs.Whitelaw grew to believe quite firmly in the supernatural nature of that unforgotten cry.