It’s chilly in here not that I feel it,€ he said. Then he sent the cat to start collecting food for the next meal, and began to talk in his rumbling voice. This was the story he told.

Hell Hall had once been an ordinary farmhouse named Hill Hall, it had been built by a farmer named Hill. It was about two hundred years old, the same age as the farm where the Sheepdog and the cat lived.

The two houses are quite a bit alike,€ said the Colonel, only our place is painted white and well cared for. I remember Hell Hall before it was painted black and it really wasn’t bad at all.€

The farmer named Hill had got into debt and sold Hill Hall to an ancestor of Cruella de Vil’s, who liked its lonely position on the wild heath. He intended to pull the farmhouse down and build himself a fantastic house which was to be a mixture of a castle and a cathedral, and had begun by building the surrounding wall and the Folly. (The Colonel had heard all this while visiting the Vicarage).

Once the wall, with its heavy iron gates, was finished, strange rumours began to spread. Villagers crossing the heath at night heard screams and wild laughter. Were there prisoners behind the prison-like wall? People began to count their children carefully.

Some of the stories Well, I shan’t tell you just as you’re falling asleep,€ said the Colonel. I didn’t hear them at the Vicarage. But I will tell you something because it won’t upset you as it naturally upset the villagers. It was said that this de Vil fellow had a long tail. I didn’t hear that at the Vicarage, either.

Missis had taken in very little of this and was now fast asleep, but Pongo was keenly interested.

By this time,€ the Colonel went on, people were calling the place Hell Hall, and the de Vil chap plain devil. The end came when the men from several villages arrived one night with lighted torches, prepared to break open the gates and burn the farmhouse down. But as they approached the gates a terriffic thunderstorm began and put the torches out. Then the gates burst open seemingly of their own accord and out came de Vil, driving a coach and four. And the story is that lightning was coming not from the skies but from de Vil blue forked lightning. All the men ran away screaming and never came back. And neither did de Vil. The house stood empty for thirty years. Then someone rented it. It’s been rented again and again, but no one ever stays.

And it still belongs to the de Vil family?€ asked Pongo.