But he was soon satisfied that it was only a blind woman everybody knew--so old that she had become childish.

She had heard the reports of the factory being haunted, and groping about with her half-withered brain full of them, had found the garden and the back door open, and had climbed to the first-floor by a farther stair, well known to her when she used to work that very machine.

She had seated herself instinctively, according to ancient wont, and had set it in motion once more.
Yielding to an impulse of experiment, Robert began to play again.
Thereupon her disordered ideas broke out in words.

And Robert soon began to feel that it could hardly be more ghastly to look upon a ghost than to be taken for one.
'Ay, ay, sir,' said the old woman, in a tone of commiseration, 'it maun be sair to bide.

I dinna wonner 'at ye canna lie still.