warm you a cup o' pea-soup. There's some left in the crock."

She bustled into the back-kitchen for the soup and a saucepan. Rosaline kept her head down: deep, laboured breathings agitated her. Nancy Tomson stood looking on, her arms folded in her check apron.

"Whereabouts did ye hear they Whistlers, Rosaline?" she asked at length.

But there was no answer.

"On the Bare Plain, I take it," resumed the woman. "Were't a-nigh they mounds by the Shaaft? Sounds echoes in they zigzag paths rarely. I've heard the wind a-whistling like anything there afore now. She be a pewerly lonesome consarn, thaat Shaaft, for waun who has to paas her at night alone."

A moan, telling of the sharpest mental agony, broke from Rosaline. Dame Bell heard it as she was coming in. In the midst of her sympathy, it angered her.