"Eh! We're on the moor now sure enough," said Mrs. Medlock. 

The carriage lamps shed a yellow light on a rough-looking
road which seemed to be cut through bushes and low-growing
things which ended in the great expanse of dark apparently
spread out before and around them.  A wind was rising
and making a singular, wild, low, rushing sound. 

"It's--it's not the sea, is it?" said Mary, looking round
at her companion. 

"No, not it," answered Mrs. Medlock.  "Nor it isn't fields
nor mountains, it's just miles and miles and miles of wild
land that nothing grows on but heather and gorse and broom,
and nothing lives on but wild ponies and sheep."

"I feel as if it might be the sea, if there were water
on it," said Mary.  "It sounds like the sea just now."

"That's the wind blowing through the bushes," Mrs. Medlock said. 
"It's a wild, dreary enough place to my mind, though there's
plenty that likes it--particularly when the heather's in bloom."

On and on they drove through the darkness, and though
the rain stopped, the wind rushed by and whistled and made
strange sounds.  The road went up and down, and several
times the carriage passed over a little bridge beneath
which water rushed very fast with a great deal of noise. 
Mary felt as if the drive would never come to an end
and that the wide, bleak moor was a wide expanse of black
ocean through which she was passing on a strip of dry land. 

"I don't like it," she said to herself.  "I don't like it,"
and she pinched her thin lips more tightly together. 

The horses were climbing up a hilly piece of road
when she first caught sight of a light.  Mrs. Medlock
saw it as soon as she did and drew a long sigh of relief. 

"Eh, I am glad to see that bit o' light twinkling,"
she exclaimed.  "It's the light in the lodge window. 
We shall get a good cup of tea after a bit, at all events."

It was "after a bit," as she said, for when the carriage
passed through the park gates there was still two miles
of avenue to drive through and the trees (which nearly
met overhead) made it seem as if they were driving
through a long dark vault. 

They drove out of the vault into a clear space
and stopped before an immensely long but low-built
house which seemed to ramble round a stone court. 
At first Mary thought that there were no lights at all
in the windows, but as she got out of the carriage
she saw that one room in a corner upstairs showed a dull glow. 

The entrance door was a huge one made of massive, curiously
shaped panels of oak studded with big iron nails and bound
with great iron bars.  It opened into an enormous hall,
which was so dimly lighted that the faces in the portraits
on the walls and the figures in the suits of armor
made Mary feel that she did not want to look at them. 
As she stood on the stone floor she looked a very small,
odd little black figure, and she felt as small and lost
and odd as she looked. 

A neat, thin old man stood near the manservant who opened
the door for them. 

"You are to take her to her room," he said in a husky voice. 
"He doesn't want to see her.  He's going to London
in the morning."

"Very well, Mr. Pitcher," Mrs. Medlock answered. 
"So long as I know what's expected of me, I can manage."

"What's expected of you, Mrs. Medlock," Mr. Pitcher said,
"is that you make sure that he's not disturbed and that he
doesn't see what he doesn't want to see."

And then Mary Lennox was led up a broad staircase
and down a long corridor and up a short flight
of steps and through another corridor and another,
until a door opened in a wall and she found herself
in a room with a fire in it and a supper on a table. 

Mrs. Medlock said unceremoniously:

"Well, here you are! This room and the next are where you'll
live--and you must keep to them.  Don't you forget that!"

It was in this way Mistress Mary arrived at Misselthwaite
Manor and she had perhaps never felt quite so contrary
in all her life. 

CHAPTER IV

MARTHA

When she opened her eyes in the morning it was because