There is the death of the last occupant of the Hall, fulfilling so exactly the conditions of the family legend, and there are the repeated reports from peasants of the appearance of a strange creature upon the moor.

Twice I have with my own ears heard the sound which resembled the distant baying of a hound.

It is incredible, impossible, that it should really be outside the ordinary laws of nature.

A spectral hound which leaves material footmarks and fills the air with its howling is surely not to be thought of.

Stapleton may fall in with such a superstition, and Mortimer also, but if I have one quality upon earth it is common sense, and nothing will persuade me to believe in such a thing.