"The doctor said there was but one last chance--change of air, and absence from dangerous neighbors." "But you did not tell me where they are gone to." "I did not, ma'am, and for the best reason in life--because I don't know." "You don't know! Why, is it possible they made a secret of such a matter ?" "Quite possible, ma'am, and to the back o' that they swore every one of us upon the seven gospels never to tell any individual, man or woman, where they went to." "But did they not tell yourselves ?" "Devil a syllable, ma'am." "And why, then, did they swear you to secrecy ?" "Why, of course, ma'am, to make us keep the secret." "But why swear you, I ask again, to keep a secret which you did not know ?" "Why, ma'am, because they knew that in that case there was little danger of our committin' parjury; and because every saicret which one does not know is sure to be kept." She looked keenly at him, and added, "I'm inclined to think, sirrah, that you are impertinent." "Very likely, ma'am," replied Tom, with great gravity.

"I've a strong notion of that myself.

My father before me was impertinent, and his last dying words to me were, 'Tom, I lay it as a last injunction upon you to keep up the principles of our family, and always to show nothing but impertinence to those who don't deserve respect.'" With a face scarlet from indignation she immediately ordered her carriage home, but before it had arrived there the intelligence from another source had reached the family, together with the fact that the Banshee had been heard by Mr.Goodwin's servants under Miss Alice's window.

Such, indeed, was the fact; and the report of the circumstance had spread through half the parish before the hour of noon next day.
The removal of Alice sank heavily upon the heart of Harry Woodward; it seemed to him as if she had gone out of his grasp, and from under the influence of his eye, for, by whatever means he might accomplish it, he was resolved to keep the deadly power of that eye upon her.

He had calculated upon the voice and prophetic wail of the Banshee as being fatal in her then state of health; or was it this ominous and supernatural foreboding of her dissolution that caused them to fly from the place?
He reasoned, as the reader may perceive, upon the principle of the Banshee being, according to the superstitious notions entertained of her, a real supernatural visitant, and not the unscrupulous and diabolical imitation of her by Catherine Collins.