The Silent Dead by Arthur Gask

Following upon my coming to the house on the moor, it was some weeks before I settled down into a contented frame of mind and felt happy in my surroundings. It was not that my employer and two fellow-servants from the very first did not do their best to make me comfortable, as it was obvious they were intending to be most kind to me. The work, too, was light and I had plenty of spare time to myself; the food was good and there was a cosy, homely atmosphere in the big kitchen where we three had our meals. Another thing, I had a nice comfortably furnished room in the upper story and, the weather being cold -- it was November when I arrived -- I could have as big a fire as I wanted in the huge old-fashioned grate.

Yet -- I could not shake off the feeling that an evil spirit brooded over the place. There was something so gloomy and sinister in the great loneliness of our surroundings, and it seemed to suggest to me tragedy of a mysterious and unknown kind. As I expected from what I had heard at the hotel in Bovey Tracey, we were miles and miles from anywhere, with no other habitations in sight, no road near us and, week after week, no human beings passed by. We might, I thought, be the last people left alive in all the world, destined to live and die and meet no fellow creatures again.