In which the Master of Ravenswood, forced to leave his ancestral home under a cloud of ill favour, encounters a mysterious and unsettling apparition at the Mermaiden’s Fountain before tending to the death and burial rites of the faithful old Alice in the solitude of her humble cottage. Amid these somber duties and the eerie discourse of local crones, he prepares to meet the Marquis at the lonely inn called Tod’s Hole, contemplating the mingled shadows of superstition and sober fate that attend his path.