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"My word, it isn't a very cheerful place," said Sir Henry.

"I suppose one can tone down to it, but I feel a bit out of the picture at present.

I don't wonder that my uncle got a little jumpy if he lived all alone in such a house as this.

However, if it suits you, we will retire early to-night, and perhaps things may seem more cheerful in the morning."

I drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out from my window.

It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the hall door.

Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising wind.

A half moon broke through the rifts of racing clouds.

In its cold light I saw beyond the trees a broken fringe of rocks, and the long, low curve of the melancholy moor.

I closed the curtain, feeling that my last impression was in keeping with the rest.

And yet it was not quite the last.

I found myself weary and yet wakeful, tossing restlessly from side to side, seeking for the sleep which would not come.

Far away a chiming clock struck out the quarters of the hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay upon the old house.

And then suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable.

It was the sob of a woman, the muffled, strangling gasp of one who is torn by an uncontrollable sorrow.

I sat up in bed and listened intently.

The noise could not have been far away and was certainly in the house.

For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound save the chiming clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall.

The fresh beauty of the following morning did something to efface from our minds the grim and gray impression which had been left upon both of us by our first experience of Baskerville Hall.

As Sir Henry and I sat at breakfast the sunlight flooded in through the high mullioned windows, throwing watery patches of colour from the coats of arms which covered them.

The dark panelling glowed like bronze in the golden rays, and it was hard to realize that this was indeed the chamber which had struck such a gloom into our souls upon the evening before.

"I guess it is ourselves and not the house that we have to blame!" said the baronet. "We were tired with our journey and chilled by our drive, so we took a gray view of the place. Now we are fresh and well, so it is all cheerful once more."

"And yet it was not entirely a question of imagination," I answered.

"Did you, for example, happen to hear someone, a woman I think, sobbing in the night?" "That is curious, for I did when I was half asleep fancy that I heard something of the sort.

Chapter 7. The Stapletons of Merripit House

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