slowly from grief, and after five years died. On the evening of her death a thin wan woman great with child was seen to enter the village. None, it appeared, had spoken to her. She had passed through the village and towards the cottage where the dead woman lay. The friend who was keeping watch saw the door open and a pale woman with frightened eyes approach the bed. There had been a terrifying shriek and the intruder had dropped to the ground. During the hours of the night a little life had come forth, which looked momentarily and wearily on the world. With a sigh it had gone out again into the silence, where at dawn the weary mother had followed it. But remorse, so it was said, had chained her to the spot where her own mother had died, and throughout the following nights her spirit could be heard sobbing and moaning. For more than forty years the place had been considered cursed, and had been steadfastly avoided. Even the contents of the cottage had remained untouched.

Peter had ventured a word of pity for the desolate creature whose story he had just heard. But pity was, apparently, the last emotion roused to

wards her.

Horror of her sin and degradation, a

horror enhanced by the superstition vivid around her memory, was all the buxom postmistress felt. And should any one be wickedly daring enough to enter the cottage and live there-well, the curse of evil would undoubtedly fall upon him, though assuredly no one would interfere should any one prove himself a sufficient friend of evil for such a

venture.

So much had Peter gathered regarding the cottage and its story. He had then put another question regarding the white house on the hill.

It belonged, so he was told, to a Lady Anne Garland, who lived there with a companion. At the moment she was away from home, though she was expected to return in June. And then the other customer had entered the shop, and the flood of the good woman's discourse had been stemmed.

Peter had reached the copse by now and turned in at the broken gate. As he entered the cottage it seemed to him that there was an air of expectancy about the place, as if it was waiting for the answer to a question.

Involuntarily Peter spoke aloud.

"It's all right," he said. "I am going to stay till some one comes to kick me out."

And then of course it was mere fancy, but a little breeze seemed to pass through the room, like a sigh of relief or content.

CHAPTER V

THE SOUL OF A WOMAN

THUS Peter entered upon his estate, since there was evidently no man would say him nay. He, the wayfarer, who for two years had slept by the hedge-side or in barns, found himself possessed of a castle.

It might be conjectured whether he would find the change cramping, stifling. He did not. The windows, which he mended, he set wide open to the sun and wind. Big fires of sticks and fir-cones aired and freed the place from the odour of damp and decay that hung about it. He took the precaution of buying a couple of blankets and a mattress. Also, as he was once more to become a civilized being, at all events in his own eyes, he bought three suits of the garments called pyjamas.

They pleased Peter enormously. Blue, pink, and

green, he placed them on the table and looked at them. They told him as plainly as their flannel tongues could speak that he had returned to his birthright. He had purchased them in the market town already mentioned, which lay some eight miles distant from the cottage, and the purchase had been made with an air of swagger. Piping had proved a not unremunerative occupation. There was now, however, another source

of income.

Certainly the income would not be large at present, but it well sufficed. Peter would therefore pipe no longer for pay, but merely for pleasure.

He had also laid in a store of fair foolscap paper and a large bottle of ink. The joy of creation had taken possession of him. His brain was again fertile. It was partly on this account that he had been ready to take up a fixed abode, since fate had flung one in his path. He owed it to the children of his brain to give them every chance, though his first child had been brought forth amidst difficulties and hardships.

The news that a stranger, wearing a peacock feather in his hat, had taken up his abode in the cottage of ill-omen spread like wild-fire through