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Title: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

Author: M. R. James

Release date: July 1, 2005 [eBook #8486]
Most recently updated: August 8, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GHOST
STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY ***

Ghost Stories of an
Antiquary

by M. R. James

These stories are dedicated to all those who at various times have listened
to them.

Contents

Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book
Lost Hearts
The Mezzotint
The Ash-tree
Number 13
Count Magnus
“Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”
The Treasure of Abbot Thomas

If anyone is curious about my local settings, let it be recorded that St
Bertrand de Comminges and Viborg are real places: that in “Oh, Whistle,
and I’ll Come to You” I had Felixstowe in mind. As for the fragments of
ostensible erudition which are scattered about my pages, hardly anything in
them is not pure invention; there never was, naturally, any such book as that
which I quote in “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas”. “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-
book” was written in 1894 and printed soon after in the National Review,
“Lost Hearts” appeared in the Pall Mall Magazine; of the next five stories,
most of which were read to friends at Christmas-time at King’s College,
Cambridge, I only recollect that I wrote “Number 13” in 1899, while “The
Treasure of Abbot Thomas” was composed in the summer of 1904.

M. R. JAMES

CANON ALBERIC’S SCRAP-BOOK

St Bertrand de Comminges is a decayed town on the spurs of the
Pyrenees, not very far from Toulouse, and still nearer to Bagnères-de-
Luchon. It was the site of a bishopric until the Revolution, and has a
cathedral which is visited by a certain number of tourists. In the spring of
1883 an Englishman arrived at this old-world place—I can hardly dignify it
with the name of city, for there are not a thousand inhabitants. He was a
Cambridge man, who had come specially from Toulouse to see St
Bertrand’s Church, and had left two friends, who were less keen
archaeologists than himself, in their hotel at Toulouse, under promise to join
him on the following morning. Half an hour at the church would satisfy
them, and all three could then pursue their journey in the direction of Auch.
But our Englishman had come early on the day in question, and proposed to
himself to fill a note-book and to use several dozens of plates in the process
of describing and photographing every corner of the wonderful church that
dominates the little hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this design
satisfactorily, it was necessary to monopolize the verger of the church for
the day. The verger or sacristan (I prefer the latter appellation, inaccurate as
it may be) was accordingly sent for by the somewhat brusque lady who
keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge; and when he came, the Englishman
found him an unexpectedly interesting object of study. It was not in the
personal appearance of the little, dry, wizened old man that the interest lay,
for he was precisely like dozens of other church-guardians in France, but in
a curious furtive, or rather hunted and oppressed, air which he had. He was
perpetually half glancing behind him; the muscles of his back and shoulders
seemed to be hunched in a continual nervous contraction, as if he were
expecting every moment to find himself in the clutch of an enemy. The
Englishman hardly knew whether to put him down as a man haunted by a
fixed delusion, or as one oppressed by a guilty conscience, or as an
unbearably henpecked husband. The probabilities, when reckoned up,

certainly pointed to the last idea; but, still, the impression conveyed was
that of a more formidable persecutor even than a termagant wife.
However, the Englishman (let us call him Dennistoun) was soon too deep
in his note-book and too busy with his camera to give more than an
occasional glance to the sacristan. Whenever he did look at him, he found
him at no great distance, either huddling himself back against the wall or
crouching in one of the gorgeous stalls. Dennistoun became rather fidgety
after a time. Mingled suspicions that he was keeping the old man from his
déjeuner, that he was regarded as likely to make away with St Bertrand’s
ivory crozier, or with the dusty stuffed crocodile that hangs over the font,
began to torment him.
“Won’t you go home?” he said at last; “I’m quite well able to finish my
notes alone; you can lock me in if you like. I shall want at least two hours
more here, and it must be cold for you, isn’t it?”
“Good heavens!” said the little man, whom the suggestion seemed to
throw into a state of unaccountable terror, “such a thing cannot be thought
of for a moment. Leave monsieur alone in the church? No, no; two hours,
three hours, all will be the same to me. I have breakfasted, I am not at all
cold, with many thanks to monsieur.”
“Very well, my little man,” quoth Dennistoun to himself: “you have been
warned, and you must take the consequences.”
Before the expiration of the two hours, the stalls, the enormous
dilapidated organ, the choir-screen of Bishop John de Mauléon, the
remnants of glass and tapestry, and the objects in the treasure-chamber, had
been well and truly examined; the sacristan still keeping at Dennistoun’s
heels, and every now and then whipping round as if he had been stung,
when one or other of the strange noises that trouble a large empty building
fell on his ear. Curious noises they were sometimes.
“Once,” Dennistoun said to me, “I could have sworn I heard a thin
metallic voice laughing high up in the tower. I darted an inquiring glance at
my sacristan. He was white to the lips. ‘It is he—that is—it is no one; the
door is locked,’ was all he said, and we looked at each other for a full
minute.”
Another little incident puzzled Dennistoun a good deal. He was
examining a large dark picture that hangs behind the altar, one of a series
illustrating the miracles of St Bertrand. The composition of the picture is

well-nigh indecipherable, but there is a Latin legend below, which runs
thus:
Qualiter S. Bertrandus liberavit hominem quem diabolus diu volebat
strangulare. (How St Bertrand delivered a man whom the Devil long sought
to strangle.)
Dennistoun was turning to the sacristan with a smile and a jocular remark
of some sort on his lips, but he was confounded to see the old man on his
knees, gazing at the picture with the eye of a suppliant in agony, his hands
tightly clasped, and a rain of tears on his cheeks. Dennistoun naturally
pretended to have noticed nothing, but the question would not go away
from him, “Why should a daub of this kind affect anyone so strongly?” He
seemed to himself to be getting some sort of clue to the reason of the
strange look that had been puzzling him all the day: the man must be a
monomaniac; but what was his monomania?
It was nearly five o’clock; the short day was drawing in, and the church
began to fill with shadows, while the curious noises—the muffled footfalls
and distant talking voices that had been perceptible all day—seemed, no
doubt because of the fading light and the consequently quickened sense of
hearing, to become more frequent and insistent.
The sacristan began for the first time to show signs of hurry and
impatience. He heaved a sigh of relief when camera and note-book were
finally packed up and stowed away, and hurriedly beckoned Dennistoun to
the western door of the church, under the tower. It was time to ring the
Angelus. A few pulls at the reluctant rope, and the great bell Bertrande, high
in the tower, began to speak, and swung her voice up among the pines and
down to the valleys, loud with mountain-streams, calling the dwellers on
those lonely hills to remember and repeat the salutation of the angel to her
whom he called Blessed among women. With that a profound quiet seemed
to fall for the first time that day upon the little town, and Dennistoun and
the sacristan went out of the church.
On the doorstep they fell into conversation.
“Monsieur seemed to interest himself in the old choir-books in the
sacristy.”
“Undoubtedly. I was going to ask you if there were a library in the town.”

“No, monsieur; perhaps there used to be one belonging to the Chapter,
but it is now such a small place—” Here came a strange pause of
irresolution, as it seemed; then, with a sort of plunge, he went on: “But if
monsieur is amateur des vieux livres, I have at home something that might
interest him. It is not a hundred yards.”
At once all Dennistoun’s cherished dreams of finding priceless
manuscripts in untrodden corners of France flashed up, to die down again
the next moment. It was probably a stupid missal of Plantin’s printing,
about 1580. Where was the likelihood that a place so near Toulouse would
not have been ransacked long ago by collectors? However, it would be
foolish not to go; he would reproach himself for ever after if he refused. So
they set off. On the way the curious irresolution and sudden determination
of the sacristan recurred to Dennistoun, and he wondered in a shamefaced
way whether he was being decoyed into some purlieu to be made away with
as a supposed rich Englishman. He contrived, therefore, to begin talking
with his guide, and to drag in, in a rather clumsy fashion, the fact that he
expected two friends to join him early the next morning. To his surprise, the
announcement seemed to relieve the sacristan at once of some of the
anxiety that oppressed him.
“That is well,” he said quite brightly—“that is very well. Monsieur will
travel in company with his friends; they will be always near him. It is a
good thing to travel thus in company—sometimes.”
The last word appeared to be added as an afterthought and to bring with
it a relapse into gloom for the poor little man.
They were soon at the house, which was one rather larger than its
neighbours, stone-built, with a shield carved over the door, the shield of
Alberic de Mauléon, a collateral descendant, Dennistoun tells me, of Bishop
John de Mauléon. This Alberic was a Canon of Comminges from 1680 to
1701. The upper windows of the mansion were boarded up, and the whole
place bore, as does the rest of Comminges, the aspect of decaying age.
Arrived on his doorstep, the sacristan paused a moment.
“Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps, after all, monsieur has not the time?”
“Not at all—lots of time—nothing to do till tomorrow. Let us see what it
is you have got.”

The door was opened at this point, and a face looked out, a face far
younger than the sacristan’s, but bearing something of the same distressing
look: only here it seemed to be the mark, not so much of fear for personal
safety as of acute anxiety on behalf of another. Plainly, the owner of the
face was the sacristan’s daughter; and, but for the expression I have
described, she was a handsome girl enough. She brightened up considerably
on seeing her father accompanied by an able-bodied stranger. A few
remarks passed between father and daughter, of which Dennistoun only
caught these words, said by the sacristan, “He was laughing in the church,”
words which were answered only by a look of terror from the girl.
But in another minute they were in the sitting-room of the house, a small,
high chamber with a stone floor, full of moving shadows cast by a wood-
fire that flickered on a great hearth. Something of the character of an
oratory was imparted to it by a tall crucifix, which reached almost to the
ceiling on one side; the figure was painted of the natural colours, the cross
was black. Under this stood a chest of some age and solidity, and when a
lamp had been brought, and chairs set, the sacristan went to this chest, and
produced therefrom, with growing excitement and nervousness, as
Dennistoun thought, a large book, wrapped in a white cloth, on which cloth
a cross was rudely embroidered in red thread. Even before the wrapping had
been removed, Dennistoun began to be interested by the size and shape of
the volume. “Too large for a missal,” he thought, “and not the shape of an
antiphoner; perhaps it may be something good, after all.” The next moment
the book was open, and Dennistoun felt that he had at last lit upon
something better than good. Before him lay a large folio, bound, perhaps,
late in the seventeenth century, with the arms of Canon Alberic de Mauléon
stamped in gold on the sides. There may have been a hundred and fifty
leaves of paper in the book, and on almost every one of them was fastened a
leaf from an illuminated manuscript. Such a collection Dennistoun had
hardly dreamed of in his wildest moments. Here were ten leaves from a
copy of Genesis, illustrated with pictures, which could not be later than
A.D. 700. Further on was a complete set of pictures from a Psalter, of
English execution, of the very finest kind that the thirteenth century could
produce; and, perhaps best of all, there were twenty leaves of uncial writing
in Latin, which, as a few words seen here and there told him at once, must
belong to some very early unknown patristic treatise. Could it possibly be a
fragment of the copy of Papias “On the Words of Our Lord”, which was

known to have existed as late as the twelfth century at Nîmes?[1] In any
case, his mind was made up; that book must return to Cambridge with him,
even if he had to draw the whole of his balance from the bank and stay at
St. Bertrand till the money came. He glanced up at the sacristan to see if his
face yielded any hint that the book was for sale. The sacristan was pale, and
his lips were working.
[1] We now know that these leaves did contain a considerable fragment of that
work, if not of that actual copy of it.

“If monsieur will turn on to the end,” he said.
So monsieur turned on, meeting new treasures at every rise of a leaf; and
at the end of the book he came upon two sheets of paper, of much more
recent date than anything he had yet seen, which puzzled him considerably.
They must be contemporary, he decided, with the unprincipled Canon
Alberic, who had doubtless plundered the Chapter library of St Bertrand to
form this priceless scrap-book. On the first of the paper sheets was a plan,
carefully drawn and instantly recognizable by a person who knew the
ground, of the south aisle and cloisters of St Bertrand’s. There were curious
signs looking like planetary symbols, and a few Hebrew words in the
corners; and in the north-west angle of the cloister was a cross drawn in
gold paint. Below the plan were some lines of writing in Latin, which ran
thus:

Responsa 12mi Dec. 1694. Interrogatum est: Inveniamne?
Responsum est: Invenies. Fiamne dives? Fies. Vivamne
invidendus? Vives. Moriarne in lecto meo? Ita. (Answers of
the 12th of December, 1694. It was asked: Shall I find it?
Answer: Thou shalt. Shall I become rich? Thou wilt. Shall I
live an object of envy? Thou wilt. Shall I die in my bed?
Thou wilt.)

“A good specimen of the treasure-hunter’s record—quite reminds one of
Mr Minor-Canon Quatremain in Old St Paul’s,” was Dennistoun’s
comment, and he turned the leaf.
What he then saw impressed him, as he has often told me, more than he
could have conceived any drawing or picture capable of impressing him.
And, though the drawing he saw is no longer in existence, there is a

photograph of it (which I possess) which fully bears out that statement. The
picture in question was a sepia drawing at the end of the seventeenth
century, representing, one would say at first sight, a Biblical scene; for the
architecture (the picture represented an interior) and the figures had that
semi-classical flavour about them which the artists of two hundred years
ago thought appropriate to illustrations of the Bible. On the right was a
King on his throne, the throne elevated on twelve steps, a canopy overhead,
soldiers on either side—evidently King Solomon. He was bending forward
with outstretched sceptre, in attitude of command; his face expressed horror
and disgust, yet there was in it also the mark of imperious command and
confident power. The left half of the picture was the strangest, however. The
interest plainly centred there. On the pavement before the throne were
grouped four soldiers, surrounding a crouching figure which must be
described in a moment. A fifth soldier lay dead on the pavement, his neck
distorted, and his eye-balls starting from his head. The four surrounding
guards were looking at the King. In their faces, the sentiment of horror was
intensified; they seemed, in fact, only restrained from flight by their implicit
trust in their master. All this terror was plainly excited by the being that
crouched in their midst. I entirely despair of conveying by any words the
impression which this figure makes upon anyone who looks at it. I recollect
once showing the photograph of the drawing to a lecturer on morphology—
a person of, I was going to say, abnormally sane and unimaginative habits
of mind. He absolutely refused to be alone for the rest of that evening, and
he told me afterwards that for many nights he had not dared to put out his
light before going to sleep. However, the main traits of the figure I can at
least indicate. At first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair;
presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful thinness, almost a
skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a
dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously
taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black
pupils, and were fixed upon the throned King with a look of beast-like hate.
Imagine one of the awful bird-catching spiders of South America translated
into human form, and endowed with intelligence just less than human, and
you will have some faint conception of the terror inspired by the appalling
effigy. One remark is universally made by those to whom I have shown the
picture: “It was drawn from the life.”

As soon as the first shock of his irresistible fright had subsided,
Dennistoun stole a look at his hosts. The sacristan’s hands were pressed
upon his eyes; his daughter, looking up at the cross on the wall, was telling
her beads feverishly.
At last the question was asked, “Is this book for sale?”
There was the same hesitation, the same plunge of determination that he
had noticed before, and then came the welcome answer, “If monsieur
pleases.”
“How much do you ask for it?”
“I will take two hundred and fifty francs.”
This was confounding. Even a collector’s conscience is sometimes
stirred, and Dennistoun’s conscience was tenderer than a collector’s.
“My good man!” he said again and again, “your book is worth far more
than two hundred and fifty francs, I assure you—far more.”
But the answer did not vary: “I will take two hundred and fifty francs, not
more.”
There was really no possibility of refusing such a chance. The money
was paid, the receipt signed, a glass of wine drunk over the transaction, and
then the sacristan seemed to become a new man. He stood upright, he
ceased to throw those suspicious glances behind him, he actually laughed or
tried to laugh. Dennistoun rose to go.
“I shall have the honour of accompanying monsieur to his hotel?” said
the sacristan.
“Oh no, thanks! it isn’t a hundred yards. I know the way perfectly, and
there is a moon.”
The offer was pressed three or four times, and refused as often.
“Then, monsieur will summon me if—if he finds occasion; he will keep
the middle of the road, the sides are so rough.”
“Certainly, certainly,” said Dennistoun, who was impatient to examine
his prize by himself; and he stepped out into the passage with his book
under his arm.
Here he was met by the daughter; she, it appeared, was anxious to do a
little business on her own account; perhaps, like Gehazi, to “take
somewhat” from the foreigner whom her father had spared.

“A silver crucifix and chain for the neck; monsieur would perhaps be
good enough to accept it?”
Well, really, Dennistoun hadn’t much use for these things. What did
mademoiselle want for it?
“Nothing—nothing in the world. Monsieur is more than welcome to it.”
The tone in which this and much more was said was unmistakably
genuine, so that Dennistoun was reduced to profuse thanks, and submitted
to have the chain put round his neck. It really seemed as if he had rendered
the father and daughter some service which they hardly knew how to repay.
As he set off with his book they stood at the door looking after him, and
they were still looking when he waved them a last good night from the steps
of the Chapeau Rouge.
Dinner was over, and Dennistoun was in his bedroom, shut up alone with
his acquisition. The landlady had manifested a particular interest in him
since he had told her that he had paid a visit to the sacristan and bought an
old book from him. He thought, too, that he had heard a hurried dialogue
between her and the said sacristan in the passage outside the salle à
manger; some words to the effect that “Pierre and Bertrand would be
sleeping in the house” had closed the conversation.
All this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over him
—nervous reaction, perhaps, after the delight of his discovery. Whatever it
was, it resulted in a conviction that there was someone behind him, and that
he was far more comfortable with his back to the wall. All this, of course,
weighed light in the balance as against the obvious value of the collection
he had acquired. And now, as I said, he was alone in his bedroom, taking
stock of Canon Alberic’s treasures, in which every moment revealed
something more charming.
“Bless Canon Alberic!” said Dennistoun, who had an inveterate habit of
talking to himself. “I wonder where he is now? Dear me! I wish that
landlady would learn to laugh in a more cheering manner; it makes one feel
as if there was someone dead in the house. Half a pipe more, did you say? I
think perhaps you are right. I wonder what that crucifix is that the young
woman insisted on giving me? Last century, I suppose. Yes, probably. It is
rather a nuisance of a thing to have round one’s neck—just too heavy. Most
likely her father has been wearing it for years. I think I might give it a clean
up before I put it away.”

He had taken the crucifix off, and laid it on the table, when his attention
was caught by an object lying on the red cloth just by his left elbow. Two or
three ideas of what it might be flitted through his brain with their own
incalculable quickness.
“A penwiper? No, no such thing in the house. A rat? No, too black. A
large spider? I trust to goodness not—no. Good God! a hand like the hand
in that picture!”
In another infinitesimal flash he had taken it in. Pale, dusky skin,
covering nothing but bones and tendons of appalling strength; coarse black
hairs, longer than ever grew on a human hand; nails rising from the ends of
the fingers and curving sharply down and forward, grey, horny and
wrinkled.
He flew out of his chair with deadly, inconceivable terror clutching at his
heart. The shape, whose left hand rested on the table, was rising to a
standing posture behind his seat, its right hand crooked above his scalp.
There was black and tattered drapery about it; the coarse hair covered it as
in the drawing. The lower jaw was thin—what can I call it?—shallow, like a
beast’s; teeth showed behind the black lips; there was no nose; the eyes, of a
fiery yellow, against which the pupils showed black and intense, and the
exulting hate and thirst to destroy life which shone there, were the most
horrifying features in the whole vision. There was intelligence of a kind in
them—intelligence beyond that of a beast, below that of a man.
The feelings which this horror stirred in Dennistoun were the intensest
physical fear and the most profound mental loathing. What did he do? What
could he do? He has never been quite certain what words he said, but he
knows that he spoke, that he grasped blindly at the silver crucifix, that he
was conscious of a movement towards him on the part of the demon, and
that he screamed with the voice of an animal in hideous pain.
Pierre and Bertrand, the two sturdy little serving-men, who rushed in,
saw nothing, but felt themselves thrust aside by something that passed out
between them, and found Dennistoun in a swoon. They sat up with him that
night, and his two friends were at St Bertrand by nine o’clock next morning.
He himself, though still shaken and nervous, was almost himself by that
time, and his story found credence with them, though not until they had
seen the drawing and talked with the sacristan.

Almost at dawn the little man had come to the inn on some pretence, and
had listened with the deepest interest to the story retailed by the landlady.
He showed no surprise.
“It is he—it is he! I have seen him myself,” was his only comment; and
to all questionings but one reply was vouchsafed: “Deux fois je l’ai vu;
mille fois je l’ai senti.” He would tell them nothing of the provenance of the
book, nor any details of his experiences. “I shall soon sleep, and my rest
will be sweet. Why should you trouble me?” he said.[2]
[2] He died that summer; his daughter married, and settled at St Papoul. She
never understood the circumstances of her father’s “obsession”.

We shall never know what he or Canon Alberic de Mauléon suffered. At
the back of that fateful drawing were some lines of writing which may be
supposed to throw light on the situation:

Contradictio Salomonis cum demonio nocturno.
Albericus de Mauléone delineavit.
V. Deus in adiutorium. Ps. Qui habitat.
Sancte Bertrande, demoniorum effugator, intercede pro me miserrimo.
Primum uidi nocte 12(mi) Dec. 1694: uidebo mox ultimum. Peccaui et
passus sum, plura adhuc passurus. Dec. 29, 1701.[3]
[3] i.e., The Dispute of Solomon with a demon of the night. Drawn by Alberic de
Mauléon. Versicle. O Lord, make haste to help me. Psalm. Whoso dwelleth xci.
Saint Bertrand, who puttest devils to flight, pray for me most unhappy. I saw it
first on the night of Dec. 12, 1694: soon I shall see it for the last time. I have
sinned and suffered, and have more to suffer yet. Dec. 29, 1701.
The “Gallia Christiana” gives the date of the Canon’s death as December 31,
1701, “in bed, of a sudden seizure”. Details of this kind are not common in the
great work of the Sammarthani.

I have never quite understood what was Dennistoun’s view of the events
I have narrated. He quoted to me once a text from Ecclesiasticus: “Some
spirits there be that are created for vengeance, and in their fury lay on sore
strokes.” On another occasion he said: “Isaiah was a very sensible man;
doesn’t he say something about night monsters living in the ruins of
Babylon? These things are rather beyond us at present.”
Another confidence of his impressed me rather, and I sympathized with
it. We had been, last year, to Comminges, to see Canon Alberic’s tomb. It is
a great marble erection with an effigy of the Canon in a large wig and

soutane, and an elaborate eulogy of his learning below. I saw Dennistoun
talking for some time with the Vicar of St Bertrand’s, and as we drove away
he said to me: “I hope it isn’t wrong: you know I am a Presbyterian—but I
—I believe there will be ‘saying of Mass and singing of dirges’ for Alberic
de Mauléon’s rest.” Then he added, with a touch of the Northern British in
his tone, “I had no notion they came so dear.”

The book is in the Wentworth Collection at Cambridge. The drawing was
photographed and then burnt by Dennistoun on the day when he left
Comminges on the occasion of his first visit.

LOST HEARTS

It was, as far as I can ascertain, in September of the year 1811 that a post-
chaise drew up before the door of Aswarby Hall, in the heart of
Lincolnshire. The little boy who was the only passenger in the chaise, and
who jumped out as soon as it had stopped, looked about him with the
keenest curiosity during the short interval that elapsed between the ringing
of the bell and the opening of the hall door. He saw a tall, square, red-brick
house, built in the reign of Anne; a stone-pillared porch had been added in
the purer classical style of 1790; the windows of the house were many, tall
and narrow, with small panes and thick white woodwork. A pediment,
pierced with a round window, crowned the front. There were wings to right
and left, connected by curious glazed galleries, supported by colonnades,
with the central block. These wings plainly contained the stables and offices
of the house. Each was surmounted by an ornamental cupola with a gilded
vane.
An evening light shone on the building, making the window-panes glow
like so many fires. Away from the Hall in front stretched a flat park studded
with oaks and fringed with firs, which stood out against the sky. The clock
in the church-tower, buried in trees on the edge of the park, only its golden
weather-cock catching the light, was striking six, and the sound came gently
beating down the wind. It was altogether a pleasant impression, though
tinged with the sort of melancholy appropriate to an evening in early
autumn, that was conveyed to the mind of the boy who was standing in the
porch waiting for the door to open to him.
The post-chaise had brought him from Warwickshire, where, some six
months before, he had been left an orphan. Now, owing to the generous
offer of his elderly cousin, Mr Abney, he had come to live at Aswarby. The
offer was unexpected, because all who knew anything of Mr Abney looked
upon him as a somewhat austere recluse, into whose steady-going
household the advent of a small boy would import a new and, it seemed,

incongruous element. The truth is that very little was known of Mr Abney’s
pursuits or temper. The Professor of Greek at Cambridge had been heard to
say that no one knew more of the religious beliefs of the later pagans than
did the owner of Aswarby. Certainly his library contained all the then
available books bearing on the Mysteries, the Orphic poems, the worship of
Mithras, and the Neo-Platonists. In the marble-paved hall stood a fine group
of Mithras slaying a bull, which had been imported from the Levant at great
expense by the owner. He had contributed a description of it to the
Gentleman’s Magazine, and he had written a remarkable series of articles in
the Critical Museum on the superstitions of the Romans of the Lower
Empire. He was looked upon, in fine, as a man wrapped up in his books,
and it was a matter of great surprise among his neighbours that he should
ever have heard of his orphan cousin, Stephen Elliott, much more that he
should have volunteered to make him an inmate of Aswarby Hall.
Whatever may have been expected by his neighbours, it is certain that Mr
Abney—the tall, the thin, the austere—seemed inclined to give his young
cousin a kindly reception. The moment the front-door was opened he darted
out of his study, rubbing his hands with delight.
“How are you, my boy?—how are you? How old are you?” said he
—“that is, you are not too much tired, I hope, by your journey to eat your
supper?”
“No, thank you, sir,” said Master Elliott; “I am pretty well.”
“That’s a good lad,” said Mr Abney. “And how old are you, my boy?”
It seemed a little odd that he should have asked the question twice in the
first two minutes of their acquaintance.
“I’m twelve years old next birthday, sir,” said Stephen.
“And when is your birthday, my dear boy? Eleventh of September, eh?
That’s well—that’s very well. Nearly a year hence, isn’t it? I like—ha, ha!
—I like to get these things down in my book. Sure it’s twelve? Certain?”
“Yes, quite sure, sir.”
“Well, well! Take him to Mrs Bunch’s room, Parkes, and let him have his
tea—supper—whatever it is.”
“Yes, sir,” answered the staid Mr Parkes; and conducted Stephen to the
lower regions.

Mrs Bunch was the most comfortable and human person whom Stephen
had as yet met in Aswarby. She made him completely at home; they were
great friends in a quarter of an hour: and great friends they remained. Mrs
Bunch had been born in the neighbourhood some fifty-five years before the
date of Stephen’s arrival, and her residence at the Hall was of twenty years’
standing. Consequently, if anyone knew the ins and outs of the house and
the district, Mrs Bunch knew them; and she was by no means disinclined to
communicate her information.
Certainly there were plenty of things about the Hall and the Hall gardens
which Stephen, who was of an adventurous and inquiring turn, was anxious
to have explained to him. “Who built the temple at the end of the laurel
walk? Who was the old man whose picture hung on the staircase, sitting at a
table, with a skull under his hand?” These and many similar points were
cleared up by the resources of Mrs Bunch’s powerful intellect. There were
others, however, of which the explanations furnished were less satisfactory.
One November evening Stephen was sitting by the fire in the
housekeeper’s room reflecting on his surroundings.
“Is Mr Abney a good man, and will he go to heaven?” he suddenly asked,
with the peculiar confidence which children possess in the ability of their
elders to settle these questions, the decision of which is believed to be
reserved for other tribunals.
“Good?—bless the child!” said Mrs Bunch. “Master’s as kind a soul as
ever I see! Didn’t I never tell you of the little boy as he took in out of the
street, as you may say, this seven years back? and the little girl, two years
after I first come here?”
“No. Do tell me all about them, Mrs Bunch—now, this minute!”
“Well,” said Mrs Bunch, “the little girl I don’t seem to recollect so much
about. I know master brought her back with him from his walk one day, and
give orders to Mrs Ellis, as was housekeeper then, as she should be took
every care with. And the pore child hadn’t no one belonging to her—she
telled me so her own self—and here she lived with us a matter of three
weeks it might be; and then, whether she were somethink of a gipsy in her
blood or what not, but one morning she out of her bed afore any of us had
opened a eye, and neither track nor yet trace of her have I set eyes on since.
Master was wonderful put about, and had all the ponds dragged; but it’s my
belief she was had away by them gipsies, for there was singing round the

house for as much as an hour the night she went, and Parkes, he declare as
he heard them a-calling in the woods all that afternoon. Dear, dear! a hodd
child she was, so silent in her ways and all, but I was wonderful taken up
with her, so domesticated she was—surprising.”
“And what about the little boy?” said Stephen.
“Ah, that pore boy!” sighed Mrs Bunch. “He were a foreigner—Jevanny
he called hisself—and he come a-tweaking his ’urdy-gurdy round and about
the drive one winter day, and master ’ad him in that minute, and ast all
about where he came from, and how old he was, and how he made his way,
and where was his relatives, and all as kind as heart could wish. But it went
the same way with him. They’re a hunruly lot, them foreign nations, I do
suppose, and he was off one fine morning just the same as the girl. Why he
went and what he done was our question for as much as a year after; for he
never took his ’urdy-gurdy, and there it lays on the shelf.”
The remainder of the evening was spent by Stephen in miscellaneous
cross-examination of Mrs Bunch and in efforts to extract a tune from the
hurdy-gurdy.
That night he had a curious dream. At the end of the passage at the top of
the house, in which his bedroom was situated, there was an old disused
bathroom. It was kept locked, but the upper half of the door was glazed,
and, since the muslin curtains which used to hang there had long been gone,
you could look in and see the lead-lined bath affixed to the wall on the right
hand, with its head towards the window.
On the night of which I am speaking, Stephen Elliott found himself, as he
thought, looking through the glazed door. The moon was shining through
the window, and he was gazing at a figure which lay in the bath.
His description of what he saw reminds me of what I once beheld myself
in the famous vaults of St Michan’s Church in Dublin, which possess the
horrid property of preserving corpses from decay for centuries. A figure
inexpressibly thin and pathetic, of a dusty leaden colour, enveloped in a
shroud-like garment, the thin lips crooked into a faint and dreadful smile,
the hands pressed tightly over the region of the heart.
As he looked upon it, a distant, almost inaudible moan seemed to issue
from its lips, and the arms began to stir. The terror of the sight forced
Stephen backwards, and he awoke to the fact that he was indeed standing
on the cold boarded floor of the passage in the full light of the moon. With a

courage which I do not think can be common among boys of his age, he
went to the door of the bathroom to ascertain if the figure of his dream were
really there. It was not, and he went back to bed.
Mrs Bunch was much impressed next morning by his story, and went so
far as to replace the muslin curtain over the glazed door of the bathroom.
Mr Abney, moreover, to whom he confided his experiences at breakfast,
was greatly interested, and made notes of the matter in what he called “his
book”.
The spring equinox was approaching, as Mr Abney frequently reminded
his cousin, adding that this had been always considered by the ancients to
be a critical time for the young: that Stephen would do well to take care of
himself, and to shut his bedroom window at night; and that Censorinus had
some valuable remarks on the subject. Two incidents that occurred about
this time made an impression upon Stephen’s mind.
The first was after an unusually uneasy and oppressed night that he had
passed—though he could not recall any particular dream that he had had.
The following evening Mrs Bunch was occupying herself in mending his
nightgown.
“Gracious me, Master Stephen!” she broke forth rather irritably, “how do
you manage to tear your nightdress all to flinders this way? Look here, sir,
what trouble you do give to poor servants that have to darn and mend after
you!”
There was indeed a most destructive and apparently wanton series of slits
or scorings in the garment, which would undoubtedly require a skilful
needle to make good. They were confined to the left side of the chest—
long, parallel slits, about six inches in length, some of them not quite
piercing the texture of the linen. Stephen could only express his entire
ignorance of their origin: he was sure they were not there the night before.
“But,” he said, “Mrs Bunch, they are just the same as the scratches on the
outside of my bedroom door; and I’m sure I never had anything to do with
making them.”
Mrs Bunch gazed at him open-mouthed, then snatched up a candle,
departed hastily from the room, and was heard making her way upstairs. In
a few minutes she came down.

“Well,” she said, “Master Stephen, it’s a funny thing to me how them
marks and scratches can ’a’ come there—too high up for any cat or dog to
’ave made ’em, much less a rat: for all the world like a Chinaman’s finger-
nails, as my uncle in the tea-trade used to tell us of when we was girls
together. I wouldn’t say nothing to master, not if I was you, Master Stephen,
my dear; and just turn the key of the door when you go to your bed.”
“I always do, Mrs Bunch, as soon as I’ve said my prayers.”
“Ah, that’s a good child: always say your prayers, and then no one can’t
hurt you.”
Herewith Mrs Bunch addressed herself to mending the injured
nightgown, with intervals of meditation, until bed-time. This was on a
Friday night in March, 1812.
On the following evening the usual duet of Stephen and Mrs Bunch was
augmented by the sudden arrival of Mr Parkes, the butler, who as a rule
kept himself rather to himself in his own pantry. He did not see that Stephen
was there: he was, moreover, flustered and less slow of speech than was his
wont.
“Master may get up his own wine, if he likes, of an evening,” was his
first remark. “Either I do it in the daytime or not at all, Mrs Bunch. I don’t
know what it may be: very like it’s the rats, or the wind got into the cellars;
but I’m not so young as I was, and I can’t go through with it as I have
done.”
“Well, Mr Parkes, you know it is a surprising place for the rats, is the
Hall.”
“I’m not denying that, Mrs Bunch; and, to be sure, many a time I’ve
heard the tale from the men in the shipyards about the rat that could speak. I
never laid no confidence in that before; but tonight, if I’d demeaned myself
to lay my ear to the door of the further bin, I could pretty much have heard
what they was saying.”
“Oh, there, Mr Parkes, I’ve no patience with your fancies! Rats talking in
the wine-cellar indeed!”
“Well, Mrs Bunch, I’ve no wish to argue with you: all I say is, if you
choose to go to the far bin, and lay your ear to the door, you may prove my
words this minute.”

“What nonsense you do talk, Mr Parkes—not fit for children to listen to!
Why, you’ll be frightening Master Stephen there out of his wits.”
“What! Master Stephen?” said Parkes, awaking to the consciousness of
the boy’s presence. “Master Stephen knows well enough when I’m a-
playing a joke with you, Mrs Bunch.”
In fact, Master Stephen knew much too well to suppose that Mr Parkes
had in the first instance intended a joke. He was interested, not altogether
pleasantly, in the situation; but all his questions were unsuccessful in
inducing the butler to give any more detailed account of his experiences in
the wine-cellar.

We have now arrived at March 24, 1812. It was a day of curious
experiences for Stephen: a windy, noisy day, which filled the house and the
gardens with a restless impression. As Stephen stood by the fence of the
grounds, and looked out into the park, he felt as if an endless procession of
unseen people were sweeping past him on the wind, borne on resistlessly
and aimlessly, vainly striving to stop themselves, to catch at something that
might arrest their flight and bring them once again into contact with the
living world of which they had formed a part. After luncheon that day Mr
Abney said:
“Stephen, my boy, do you think you could manage to come to me tonight
as late as eleven o’clock in my study? I shall be busy until that time, and I
wish to show you something connected with your future life which it is
most important that you should know. You are not to mention this matter to
Mrs Bunch nor to anyone else in the house; and you had better go to your
room at the usual time.”
Here was a new excitement added to life: Stephen eagerly grasped at the
opportunity of sitting up till eleven o’clock. He looked in at the library door
on his way upstairs that evening, and saw a brazier, which he had often
noticed in the corner of the room, moved out before the fire; an old silver-
gilt cup stood on the table, filled with red wine, and some written sheets of
paper lay near it. Mr Abney was sprinkling some incense on the brazier
from a round silver box as Stephen passed, but did not seem to notice his
step.

The wind had fallen, and there was a still night and a full moon. At about
ten o’clock Stephen was standing at the open window of his bedroom,
looking out over the country. Still as the night was, the mysterious
population of the distant moon-lit woods was not yet lulled to rest. From
time to time strange cries as of lost and despairing wanderers sounded from
across the mere. They might be the notes of owls or water-birds, yet they
did not quite resemble either sound. Were not they coming nearer? Now
they sounded from the nearer side of the water, and in a few moments they
seemed to be floating about among the shrubberies. Then they ceased; but
just as Stephen was thinking of shutting the window and resuming his
reading of Robinson Crusoe, he caught sight of two figures standing on the
gravelled terrace that ran along the garden side of the Hall—the figures of a
boy and girl, as it seemed; they stood side by side, looking up at the
windows. Something in the form of the girl recalled irresistibly his dream of
the figure in the bath. The boy inspired him with more acute fear.
Whilst the girl stood still, half smiling, with her hands clasped over her
heart, the boy, a thin shape, with black hair and ragged clothing, raised his
arms in the air with an appearance of menace and of unappeasable hunger
and longing. The moon shone upon his almost transparent hands, and
Stephen saw that the nails were fearfully long and that the light shone
through them. As he stood with his arms thus raised, he disclosed a
terrifying spectacle. On the left side of his chest there opened a black and
gaping rent; and there fell upon Stephen’s brain, rather than upon his ear,
the impression of one of those hungry and desolate cries that he had heard
resounding over the woods of Aswarby all that evening. In another moment
this dreadful pair had moved swiftly and noiselessly over the dry gravel,
and he saw them no more.
Inexpressibly frightened as he was, he determined to take his candle and
go down to Mr Abney’s study, for the hour appointed for their meeting was
near at hand. The study or library opened out of the front-hall on one side,
and Stephen, urged on by his terrors, did not take long in getting there. To
effect an entrance was not so easy. It was not locked, he felt sure, for the
key was on the outside of the door as usual. His repeated knocks produced
no answer. Mr Abney was engaged: he was speaking. What! why did he try
to cry out? and why was the cry choked in his throat? Had he, too, seen the
mysterious children? But now everything was quiet, and the door yielded to
Stephen’s terrified and frantic pushing.

On the table in Mr Abney’s study certain papers were found which
explained the situation to Stephen Elliott when he was of an age to
understand them. The most important sentences were as follows:
“It was a belief very strongly and generally held by the ancients—of
whose wisdom in these matters I have had such experience as induces me to
place confidence in their assertions—that by enacting certain processes,
which to us moderns have something of a barbaric complexion, a very
remarkable enlightenment of the spiritual faculties in man may be attained:
that, for example, by absorbing the personalities of a certain number of his
fellow-creatures, an individual may gain a complete ascendancy over those
orders of spiritual beings which control the elemental forces of our
universe.
“It is recorded of Simon Magus that he was able to fly in the air, to
become invisible, or to assume any form he pleased, by the agency of the
soul of a boy whom, to use the libellous phrase employed by the author of
the Clementine Recognitions, he had ‘murdered’. I find it set down,
moreover, with considerable detail in the writings of Hermes Trismegistus,
that similar happy results may be produced by the absorption of the hearts
of not less than three human beings below the age of twenty-one years. To
the testing of the truth of this receipt I have devoted the greater part of the
last twenty years, selecting as the corpora vilia of my experiment such
persons as could conveniently be removed without occasioning a sensible
gap in society. The first step I effected by the removal of one Phoebe
Stanley, a girl of gipsy extraction, on March 24, 1792. The second, by the
removal of a wandering Italian lad, named Giovanni Paoli, on the night of
March 23, 1805. The final ‘victim’—to employ a word repugnant in the
highest degree to my feelings—must be my cousin, Stephen Elliott. His day
must be this March 24, 1812.
“The best means of effecting the required absorption is to remove the
heart from the living subject, to reduce it to ashes, and to mingle them with
about a pint of some red wine, preferably port. The remains of the first two
subjects, at least, it will be well to conceal: a disused bathroom or wine-
cellar will be found convenient for such a purpose. Some annoyance may be
experienced from the psychic portion of the subjects, which popular
language dignifies with the name of ghosts. But the man of philosophic

temperament—to whom alone the experiment is appropriate—will be little
prone to attach importance to the feeble efforts of these beings to wreak
their vengeance on him. I contemplate with the liveliest satisfaction the
enlarged and emancipated existence which the experiment, if successful,
will confer on me; not only placing me beyond the reach of human justice
(so-called), but eliminating to a great extent the prospect of death itself.”

Mr Abney was found in his chair, his head thrown back, his face stamped
with an expression of rage, fright, and mortal pain. In his left side was a
terrible lacerated wound, exposing the heart. There was no blood on his
hands, and a long knife that lay on the table was perfectly clean. A savage
wild-cat might have inflicted the injuries. The window of the study was
open, and it was the opinion of the coroner that Mr Abney had met his death
by the agency of some wild creature. But Stephen Elliott’s study of the
papers I have quoted led him to a very different conclusion.

THE MEZZOTINT

Some time ago I believe I had the pleasure of telling you the story of an
adventure which happened to a friend of mine by the name of Dennistoun,
during his pursuit of objects of art for the museum at Cambridge.
He did not publish his experiences very widely upon his return to
England; but they could not fail to become known to a good many of his
friends, and among others to the gentleman who at that time presided over
an art museum at another University. It was to be expected that the story
should make a considerable impression on the mind of a man whose
vocation lay in lines similar to Dennistoun’s, and that he should be eager to
catch at any explanation of the matter which tended to make it seem
improbable that he should ever be called upon to deal with so agitating an
emergency. It was, indeed, somewhat consoling to him to reflect that he was
not expected to acquire ancient MSS. for his institution; that was the
business of the Shelburnian Library. The authorities of that institution
might, if they pleased, ransack obscure corners of the Continent for such
matters. He was glad to be obliged at the moment to confine his attention to
enlarging the already unsurpassed collection of English topographical
drawings and engravings possessed by his museum. Yet, as it turned out,
even a department so homely and familiar as this may have its dark corners,
and to one of these Mr Williams was unexpectedly introduced.
Those who have taken even the most limited interest in the acquisition of
topographical pictures are aware that there is one London dealer whose aid
is indispensable to their researches. Mr J. W. Britnell publishes at short
intervals very admirable catalogues of a large and constantly changing stock
of engravings, plans, and old sketches of mansions, churches, and towns in
England and Wales. These catalogues were, of course, the ABC of his
subject to Mr Williams: but as his museum already contained an enormous
accumulation of topographical pictures, he was a regular, rather than a

copious, buyer; and he rather looked to Mr Britnell to fill up gaps in the
rank and file of his collection than to supply him with rarities.
Now, in February of last year there appeared upon Mr Williams’s desk at
the museum a catalogue from Mr Britnell’s emporium, and accompanying it
was a typewritten communication from the dealer himself. This latter ran as
follows:

DEAR SIR,
We beg to call your attention to No. 978 in our
accompanying catalogue, which we shall be glad to send on
approval.

Yours faithfully,
J. W. BRITNELL.

To turn to No. 978 in the accompanying catalogue was with Mr. Williams
(as he observed to himself) the work of a moment, and in the place
indicated he found the following entry:
978.—Unknown. Interesting mezzotint: View of a manor-house, early
part of the century. 15 by 10 inches; black frame. £2 2s.
It was not specially exciting, and the price seemed high. However, as Mr
Britnell, who knew his business and his customer, seemed to set store by it,
Mr Williams wrote a postcard asking for the article to be sent on approval,
along with some other engravings and sketches which appeared in the same
catalogue. And so he passed without much excitement of anticipation to the
ordinary labours of the day.
A parcel of any kind always arrives a day later than you expect it, and
that of Mr Britnell proved, as I believe the right phrase goes, no exception
to the rule. It was delivered at the museum by the afternoon post of
Saturday, after Mr Williams had left his work, and it was accordingly
brought round to his rooms in college by the attendant, in order that he
might not have to wait over Sunday before looking through it and returning
such of the contents as he did not propose to keep. And here he found it
when he came in to tea, with a friend.
The only item with which I am concerned was the rather large, black-
framed mezzotint of which I have already quoted the short description

given in Mr Britnell’s catalogue. Some more details of it will have to be
given, though I cannot hope to put before you the look of the picture as
clearly as it is present to my own eye. Very nearly the exact duplicate of it
may be seen in a good many old inn parlours, or in the passages of
undisturbed country mansions at the present moment. It was a rather
indifferent mezzotint, and an indifferent mezzotint is, perhaps, the worst
form of engraving known. It presented a full-face view of a not very large
manor-house of the last century, with three rows of plain sashed windows
with rusticated masonry about them, a parapet with balls or vases at the
angles, and a small portico in the centre. On either side were trees, and in
front a considerable expanse of lawn. The legend A. W. F. sculpsit was
engraved on the narrow margin; and there was no further inscription. The
whole thing gave the impression that it was the work of an amateur. What in
the world Mr Britnell could mean by affixing the price of £2 2s. to such an
object was more than Mr Williams could imagine. He turned it over with a
good deal of contempt; upon the back was a paper label, the left-hand half
of which had been torn off. All that remained were the ends of two lines of
writing: the first had the letters—ngley Hall; the second,—ssex.
It would, perhaps, be just worth while to identify the place represented,
which he could easily do with the help of a gazetteer, and then he would
send it back to Mr Britnell, with some remarks reflecting upon the
judgement of that gentleman.
He lighted the candles, for it was now dark, made the tea, and supplied
the friend with whom he had been playing golf (for I believe the authorities
of the University I write of indulge in that pursuit by way of relaxation);
and tea was taken to the accompaniment of a discussion which golfing
persons can imagine for themselves, but which the conscientious writer has
no right to inflict upon any non-golfing persons.
The conclusion arrived at was that certain strokes might have been better,
and that in certain emergencies neither player had experienced that amount
of luck which a human being has a right to expect. It was now that the
friend—let us call him Professor Binks—took up the framed engraving, and
said:
“What’s this place, Williams?”
“Just what I am going to try to find out,” said Williams, going to the shelf
for a gazetteer. “Look at the back. Somethingley Hall, either in Sussex or

Essex. Half the name’s gone, you see. You don’t happen to know it, I
suppose?”
“It’s from that man Britnell, I suppose, isn’t it?” said Binks. “Is it for the
museum?”
“Well, I think I should buy it if the price was five shillings,” said
Williams; “but for some unearthly reason he wants two guineas for it. I
can’t conceive why. It’s a wretched engraving, and there aren’t even any
figures to give it life.”
“It’s not worth two guineas, I should think,” said Binks; “but I don’t
think it’s so badly done. The moonlight seems rather good to me; and I
should have thought there were figures, or at least a figure, just on the edge
in front.”
“Let’s look,” said Williams. “Well, it’s true the light is rather cleverly
given. Where’s your figure? Oh yes! Just the head, in the very front of the
picture.”
And indeed there was—hardly more than a black blot on the extreme
edge of the engraving—the head of a man or woman, a good deal muffled
up, the back turned to the spectator, and looking towards the house.
Williams had not noticed it before.
“Still,” he said, “though it’s a cleverer thing than I thought, I can’t spend
two guineas of museum money on a picture of a place I don’t know.”
Professor Binks had his work to do, and soon went; and very nearly up to
Hall time Williams was engaged in a vain attempt to identify the subject of
his picture. “If the vowel before the ng had only been left, it would have
been easy enough,” he thought; “but as it is, the name may be anything
from Guestingley to Langley, and there are many more names ending like
this than I thought; and this rotten book has no index of terminations.”
Hall in Mr Williams’s college was at seven. It need not be dwelt upon;
the less so as he met there colleagues who had been playing golf during the
afternoon, and words with which we have no concern were freely bandied
across the table—merely golfing words, I would hasten to explain.
I suppose an hour or more to have been spent in what is called common-
room after dinner. Later in the evening some few retired to Williams’s
rooms, and I have little doubt that whist was played and tobacco smoked.
During a lull in these operations Williams picked up the mezzotint from the

table without looking at it, and handed it to a person mildly interested in art,
telling him where it had come from, and the other particulars which we
already know.
The gentleman took it carelessly, looked at it, then said, in a tone of some
interest:
“It’s really a very good piece of work, Williams; it has quite a feeling of
the romantic period. The light is admirably managed, it seems to me, and
the figure, though it’s rather too grotesque, is somehow very impressive.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” said Williams, who was just then busy giving whisky-and-
soda to others of the company, and was unable to come across the room to
look at the view again.
It was by this time rather late in the evening, and the visitors were on the
move. After they went Williams was obliged to write a letter or two and
clear up some odd bits of work. At last, some time past midnight, he was
disposed to turn in, and he put out his lamp after lighting his bedroom
candle. The picture lay face upwards on the table where the last man who
looked at it had put it, and it caught his eye as he turned the lamp down.
What he saw made him very nearly drop the candle on the floor, and he
declares now that if he had been left in the dark at that moment he would
have had a fit. But, as that did not happen, he was able to put down the light
on the table and take a good look at the picture. It was indubitable—rankly
impossible, no doubt, but absolutely certain. In the middle of the lawn in
front of the unknown house there was a figure where no figure had been at
five o’clock that afternoon. It was crawling on all-fours towards the house,
and it was muffled in a strange black garment with a white cross on the
back.
I do not know what is the ideal course to pursue in a situation of this
kind. I can only tell you what Mr Williams did. He took the picture by one
corner and carried it across the passage to a second set of rooms which he
possessed. There he locked it up in a drawer, sported the doors of both sets
of rooms, and retired to bed; but first he wrote out and signed an account of
the extraordinary change which the picture had undergone since it had come
into his possession.
Sleep visited him rather late; but it was consoling to reflect that the
behaviour of the picture did not depend upon his own unsupported
testimony. Evidently the man who had looked at it the night before had seen

something of the same kind as he had, otherwise he might have been
tempted to think that something gravely wrong was happening either to his
eyes or his mind. This possibility being fortunately precluded, two matters
awaited him on the morrow. He must take stock of the picture very
carefully, and call in a witness for the purpose, and he must make a
determined effort to ascertain what house it was that was represented. He
would therefore ask his neighbour Nisbet to breakfast with him, and he
would subsequently spend a morning over the gazetteer.
Nisbet was disengaged, and arrived about 9.30. His host was not quite
dressed, I am sorry to say, even at this late hour. During breakfast nothing
was said about the mezzotint by Williams, save that he had a picture on
which he wished for Nisbet’s opinion. But those who are familiar with
University life can picture for themselves the wide and delightful range of
subjects over which the conversation of two Fellows of Canterbury College
is likely to extend during a Sunday morning breakfast. Hardly a topic was
left unchallenged, from golf to lawn-tennis. Yet I am bound to say that
Williams was rather distraught; for his interest naturally centred in that very
strange picture which was now reposing, face downwards, in the drawer in
the room opposite.
The morning pipe was at last lighted, and the moment had arrived for
which he looked. With very considerable—almost tremulous—excitement
he ran across, unlocked the drawer, and, extracting the picture—still face
downwards—ran back, and put it into Nisbet’s hands.
“Now,” he said, “Nisbet, I want you to tell me exactly what you see in
that picture. Describe it, if you don’t mind, rather minutely. I’ll tell you why
afterwards.”
“Well,” said Nisbet, “I have here a view of a country-house—English, I
presume—by moonlight.”
“Moonlight? You’re sure of that?”
“Certainly. The moon appears to be on the wane, if you wish for details,
and there are clouds in the sky.”
“All right. Go on. I’ll swear,” added Williams in an aside, “there was no
moon when I saw it first.”
“Well, there’s not much more to be said,” Nisbet continued. “The house
has one—two—three rows of windows, five in each row, except at the

bottom, where there’s a porch instead of the middle one, and—”
“But what about figures?” said Williams, with marked interest.
“There aren’t any,” said Nisbet; “but—”
“What! No figure on the grass in front?”
“Not a thing.”
“You’ll swear to that?”
“Certainly I will. But there’s just one other thing.”
“What?”
“Why, one of the windows on the ground-floor—left of the door—is
open.”
“Is it really so? My goodness! he must have got in,” said Williams, with
great excitement; and he hurried to the back of the sofa on which Nisbet
was sitting, and, catching the picture from him, verified the matter for
himself.
It was quite true. There was no figure, and there was the open window.
Williams, after a moment of speechless surprise, went to the writing-table
and scribbled for a short time. Then he brought two papers to Nisbet, and
asked him first to sign one—it was his own description of the picture,
which you have just heard—and then to read the other which was
Williams’s statement written the night before.
“What can it all mean?” said Nisbet.
“Exactly,” said Williams. “Well, one thing I must do—or three things,
now I think of it. I must find out from Garwood”—this was his last night’s
visitor—“what he saw, and then I must get the thing photographed before it
goes further, and then I must find out what the place is.”
“I can do the photographing myself,” said Nisbet, “and I will. But, you
know, it looks very much as if we were assisting at the working out of a
tragedy somewhere. The question is, has it happened already, or is it going
to come off? You must find out what the place is. Yes,” he said, looking at
the picture again, “I expect you’re right: he has got in. And if I don’t
mistake there’ll be the devil to pay in one of the rooms upstairs.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Williams: “I’ll take the picture across to old
Green” (this was the senior Fellow of the College, who had been Bursar for

many years). “It’s quite likely he’ll know it. We have property in Essex and
Sussex, and he must have been over the two counties a lot in his time.”
“Quite likely he will,” said Nisbet; “but just let me take my photograph
first. But look here, I rather think Green isn’t up today. He wasn’t in Hall
last night, and I think I heard him say he was going down for the Sunday.”
“That’s true, too,” said Williams; “I know he’s gone to Brighton. Well, if
you’ll photograph it now, I’ll go across to Garwood and get his statement,
and you keep an eye on it while I’m gone. I’m beginning to think two
guineas is not a very exorbitant price for it now.”
In a short time he had returned, and brought Mr Garwood with him.
Garwood’s statement was to the effect that the figure, when he had seen it,
was clear of the edge of the picture, but had not got far across the lawn. He
remembered a white mark on the back of its drapery, but could not have
been sure it was a cross. A document to this effect was then drawn up and
signed, and Nisbet proceeded to photograph the picture.
“Now what do you mean to do?” he said. “Are you going to sit and watch
it all day?”
“Well, no, I think not,” said Williams. “I rather imagine we’re meant to
see the whole thing. You see, between the time I saw it last night and this
morning there was time for lots of things to happen, but the creature only
got into the house. It could easily have got through its business in the time
and gone to its own place again; but the fact of the window being open, I
think, must mean that it’s in there now. So I feel quite easy about leaving it.
And, besides, I have a kind of idea that it wouldn’t change much, if at all, in
the daytime. We might go out for a walk this afternoon, and come in to tea,
or whenever it gets dark. I shall leave it out on the table here, and sport the
door. My skip can get in, but no one else.”
The three agreed that this would be a good plan; and, further, that if they
spent the afternoon together they would be less likely to talk about the
business to other people; for any rumour of such a transaction as was going
on would bring the whole of the Phasmatological Society about their ears.
We may give them a respite until five o’clock.
At or near that hour the three were entering Williams’s staircase. They
were at first slightly annoyed to see that the door of his rooms was
unsported; but in a moment it was remembered that on Sunday the skips

came for orders an hour or so earlier than on weekdays. However, a surprise
was awaiting them. The first thing they saw was the picture leaning up
against a pile of books on the table, as it had been left, and the next thing
was Williams’s skip, seated on a chair opposite, gazing at it with
undisguised horror. How was this? Mr Filcher (the name is not my own
invention) was a servant of considerable standing, and set the standard of
etiquette to all his own college and to several neighbouring ones, and
nothing could be more alien to his practice than to be found sitting on his
master’s chair, or appearing to take any particular notice of his master’s
furniture or pictures. Indeed, he seemed to feel this himself. He started
violently when the three men were in the room, and got up with a marked
effort. Then he said:
“I ask your pardon, sir, for taking such a freedom as to set down.”
“Not at all, Robert,” interposed Mr Williams. “I was meaning to ask you
some time what you thought of that picture.”
“Well, sir, of course I don’t set up my opinion again yours, but it ain’t the
pictur I should ’ang where my little girl could see it, sir.”
“Wouldn’t you, Robert? Why not?”
“No, sir. Why, the pore child, I recollect once she see a Door Bible, with
pictures not ’alf what that is, and we ’ad to set up with her three or four
nights afterwards, if you’ll believe me; and if she was to ketch a sight of
this skelinton here, or whatever it is, carrying off the pore baby, she would
be in a taking. You know ’ow it is with children; ’ow nervish they git with a
little thing and all. But what I should say, it don’t seem a right pictur to be
laying about, sir, not where anyone that’s liable to be startled could come on
it. Should you be wanting anything this evening, sir? Thank you, sir.”
With these words the excellent man went to continue the round of his
masters, and you may be sure the gentlemen whom he left lost no time in
gathering round the engraving. There was the house, as before, under the
waning moon and the drifting clouds. The window that had been open was
shut, and the figure was once more on the lawn: but not this time crawling
cautiously on hands and knees. Now it was erect and stepping swiftly, with
long strides, towards the front of the picture. The moon was behind it, and
the black drapery hung down over its face so that only hints of that could be
seen, and what was visible made the spectators profoundly thankful that
they could see no more than a white dome-like forehead and a few

straggling hairs. The head was bent down, and the arms were tightly clasped
over an object which could be dimly seen and identified as a child, whether
dead or living it was not possible to say. The legs of the appearance alone
could be plainly discerned, and they were horribly thin.
From five to seven the three companions sat and watched the picture by
turns. But it never changed. They agreed at last that it would be safe to
leave it, and that they would return after Hall and await further
developments.
When they assembled again, at the earliest possible moment, the
engraving was there, but the figure was gone, and the house was quiet under
the moonbeams. There was nothing for it but to spend the evening over
gazetteers and guide-books. Williams was the lucky one at last, and perhaps
he deserved it. At 11.30 p.m. he read from Murray’s Guide to Essex the
following lines:
16½ miles, Anningley. The church has been an interesting building of
Norman date, but was extensively classicized in the last century. It contains
the tomb of the family of Francis, whose mansion, Anningley Hall, a solid
Queen Anne house, stands immediately beyond the churchyard in a park of
about 80 acres. The family is now extinct, the last heir having disappeared
mysteriously in infancy in the year 1802. The father, Mr Arthur Francis,
was locally known as a talented amateur engraver in mezzotint. After his
son’s disappearance he lived in complete retirement at the Hall, and was
found dead in his studio on the third anniversary of the disaster, having just
completed an engraving of the house, impressions of which are of
considerable rarity.
This looked like business, and, indeed, Mr Green on his return at once
identified the house as Anningley Hall.
“Is there any kind of explanation of the figure, Green?” was the question
which Williams naturally asked.
“I don’t know, I’m sure, Williams. What used to be said in the place
when I first knew it, which was before I came up here, was just this: old
Francis was always very much down on these poaching fellows, and
whenever he got a chance he used to get a man whom he suspected of it
turned off the estate, and by degrees he got rid of them all but one. Squires
could do a lot of things then that they daren’t think of now. Well, this man
that was left was what you find pretty often in that country—the last

remains of a very old family. I believe they were Lords of the Manor at one
time. I recollect just the same thing in my own parish.”
“What, like the man in Tess o’ the Durbervilles?” Williams put in.
“Yes, I dare say; it’s not a book I could ever read myself. But this fellow
could show a row of tombs in the church there that belonged to his
ancestors, and all that went to sour him a bit; but Francis, they said, could
never get at him—he always kept just on the right side of the law—until
one night the keepers found him at it in a wood right at the end of the estate.
I could show you the place now; it marches with some land that used to
belong to an uncle of mine. And you can imagine there was a row; and this
man Gawdy (that was the name, to be sure—Gawdy; I thought I should get
it—Gawdy), he was unlucky enough, poor chap! to shoot a keeper. Well,
that was what Francis wanted, and grand juries—you know what they
would have been then—and poor Gawdy was strung up in double-quick
time; and I’ve been shown the place he was buried in, on the north side of
the church—you know the way in that part of the world: anyone that’s been
hanged or made away with themselves, they bury them that side. And the
idea was that some friend of Gawdy’s—not a relation, because he had none,
poor devil! he was the last of his line: kind of spes ultima gentis—must
have planned to get hold of Francis’s boy and put an end to his line, too. I
don’t know—it’s rather an out-of-the-way thing for an Essex poacher to
think of—but, you know, I should say now it looks more as if old Gawdy
had managed the job himself. Booh! I hate to think of it! have some whisky,
Williams!”
The facts were communicated by Williams to Dennistoun, and by him to
a mixed company, of which I was one, and the Sadducean Professor of
Ophiology another. I am sorry to say that the latter, when asked what he
thought of it, only remarked: “Oh, those Bridgeford people will say
anything”—a sentiment which met with the reception it deserved.
I have only to add that the picture is now in the Ashleian Museum; that it
has been treated with a view to discovering whether sympathetic ink has
been used in it, but without effect; that Mr Britnell knew nothing of it save
that he was sure it was uncommon; and that, though carefully watched, it
has never been known to change again.

THE ASH-TREE

Everyone who has travelled over Eastern England knows the smaller
country-houses with which it is studded—the rather dank little buildings,
usually in the Italian style, surrounded with parks of some eighty to a
hundred acres. For me they have always had a very strong attraction: with
the grey paling of split oak, the noble trees, the meres with their reed-beds,
and the line of distant woods. Then, I like the pillared portico—perhaps
stuck on to a red-brick Queen Anne house which has been faced with stucco
to bring it into line with the “Grecian” taste of the end of the eighteenth
century; the hall inside, going up to the roof, which hall ought always to be
provided with a gallery and a small organ. I like the library, too, where you
may find anything from a Psalter of the thirteenth century to a Shakespeare
quarto. I like the pictures, of course; and perhaps most of all I like fancying
what life in such a house was when it was first built, and in the piping times
of landlords’ prosperity, and not least now, when, if money is not so
plentiful, taste is more varied and life quite as interesting. I wish to have
one of these houses, and enough money to keep it together and entertain my
friends in it modestly.
But this is a digression. I have to tell you of a curious series of events
which happened in such a house as I have tried to describe. It is
Castringham Hall in Suffolk. I think a good deal has been done to the
building since the period of my story, but the essential features I have
sketched are still there—Italian portico, square block of white house, older
inside than out, park with fringe of woods, and mere. The one feature that
marked out the house from a score of others is gone. As you looked at it
from the park, you saw on the right a great old ash-tree growing within half
a dozen yards of the wall, and almost or quite touching the building with its
branches. I suppose it had stood there ever since Castringham ceased to be a
fortified place, and since the moat was filled in and the Elizabethan

dwelling-house built. At any rate, it had well-nigh attained its full
dimensions in the year 1690.
In that year the district in which the Hall is situated was the scene of a
number of witch-trials. It will be long, I think, before we arrive at a just
estimate of the amount of solid reason—if there was any—which lay at the
root of the universal fear of witches in old times. Whether the persons
accused of this offence really did imagine that they were possessed of
unusual power of any kind; or whether they had the will at least, if not the
power, of doing mischief to their neighbours; or whether all the
confessions, of which there are so many, were extorted by the mere cruelty
of the witch-finders—these are questions which are not, I fancy, yet solved.
And the present narrative gives me pause. I cannot altogether sweep it away
as mere invention. The reader must judge for himself.
Castringham contributed a victim to the auto-da-fé. Mrs Mothersole was
her name, and she differed from the ordinary run of village witches only in
being rather better off and in a more influential position. Efforts were made
to save her by several reputable farmers of the parish. They did their best to
testify to her character, and showed considerable anxiety as to the verdict of
the jury.
But what seems to have been fatal to the woman was the evidence of the
then proprietor of Castringham Hall—Sir Matthew Fell. He deposed to
having watched her on three different occasions from his window, at the full
of the moon, gathering sprigs “from the ash-tree near my house”. She had
climbed into the branches, clad only in her shift, and was cutting off small
twigs with a peculiarly curved knife, and as she did so she seemed to be
talking to herself. On each occasion Sir Matthew had done his best to
capture the woman, but she had always taken alarm at some accidental
noise he had made, and all he could see when he got down to the garden
was a hare running across the path in the direction of the village.
On the third night he had been at the pains to follow at his best speed,
and had gone straight to Mrs Mothersole’s house; but he had had to wait a
quarter of an hour battering at her door, and then she had come out very
cross, and apparently very sleepy, as if just out of bed; and he had no good
explanation to offer of his visit.
Mainly on this evidence, though there was much more of a less striking
and unusual kind from other parishioners, Mrs Mothersole was found guilty

and condemned to die. She was hanged a week after the trial, with five or
six more unhappy creatures, at Bury St Edmunds.
Sir Matthew Fell, then Deputy-Sheriff, was present at the execution. It
was a damp, drizzly March morning when the cart made its way up the
rough grass hill outside Northgate, where the gallows stood. The other
victims were apathetic or broken down with misery; but Mrs Mothersole
was, as in life so in death, of a very different temper. Her “poysonous
Rage”, as a reporter of the time puts it, “did so work upon the Bystanders—
yea, even upon the Hangman—that it was constantly affirmed of all that
saw her that she presented the living Aspect of a mad Divell. Yet she offer’d
no Resistance to the Officers of the Law; onely she looked upon those that
laid Hands upon her with so direfull and venomous an Aspect that—as one
of them afterwards assured me—the meer Thought of it preyed inwardly
upon his Mind for six Months after.”
However, all that she is reported to have said was the seemingly
meaningless words: “There will be guests at the Hall.” Which she repeated
more than once in an undertone.
Sir Matthew Fell was not unimpressed by the bearing of the woman. He
had some talk upon the matter with the Vicar of his parish, with whom he
travelled home after the assize business was over. His evidence at the trial
had not been very willingly given; he was not specially infected with the
witch-finding mania, but he declared, then and afterwards, that he could not
give any other account of the matter than that he had given, and that he
could not possibly have been mistaken as to what he saw. The whole
transaction had been repugnant to him, for he was a man who liked to be on
pleasant terms with those about him; but he saw a duty to be done in this
business, and he had done it. That seems to have been the gist of his
sentiments, and the Vicar applauded it, as any reasonable man must have
done.
A few weeks after, when the moon of May was at the full, Vicar and
Squire met again in the park, and walked to the Hall together. Lady Fell was
with her mother, who was dangerously ill, and Sir Matthew was alone at
home; so the Vicar, Mr Crome, was easily persuaded to take a late supper at
the Hall.
Sir Matthew was not very good company this evening. The talk ran
chiefly on family and parish matters, and, as luck would have it, Sir

Matthew made a memorandum in writing of certain wishes or intentions of
his regarding his estates, which afterwards proved exceedingly useful.
When Mr Crome thought of starting for home, about half past nine
o’clock, Sir Matthew and he took a preliminary turn on the gravelled walk
at the back of the house. The only incident that struck Mr Crome was this:
they were in sight of the ash-tree which I described as growing near the
windows of the building, when Sir Matthew stopped and said:
“What is that that runs up and down the stem of the ash? It is never a
squirrel? They will all be in their nests by now.”
The Vicar looked and saw the moving creature, but he could make
nothing of its colour in the moonlight. The sharp outline, however, seen for
an instant, was imprinted on his brain, and he could have sworn, he said,
though it sounded foolish, that, squirrel or not, it had more than four legs.
Still, not much was to be made of the momentary vision, and the two
men parted. They may have met since then, but it was not for a score of
years.
Next day Sir Matthew Fell was not downstairs at six in the morning, as
was his custom, nor at seven, nor yet at eight. Hereupon the servants went
and knocked at his chamber door. I need not prolong the description of their
anxious listenings and renewed batterings on the panels. The door was
opened at last from the outside, and they found their master dead and black.
So much you have guessed. That there were any marks of violence did not
at the moment appear; but the window was open.
One of the men went to fetch the parson, and then by his directions rode
on to give notice to the coroner. Mr Crome himself went as quick as he
might to the Hall, and was shown to the room where the dead man lay. He
has left some notes among his papers which show how genuine a respect
and sorrow was felt for Sir Matthew, and there is also this passage, which I
transcribe for the sake of the light it throws upon the course of events, and
also upon the common beliefs of the time:
“There was not any the least Trace of an Entrance having been forc’d to
the Chamber: but the Casement stood open, as my poor Friend would
always have it in this Season. He had his Evening Drink of small Ale in a
silver vessel of about a pint measure, and tonight had not drunk it out. This
Drink was examined by the Physician from Bury, a Mr Hodgkins, who
could not, however, as he afterwards declar’d upon his Oath, before the

Coroner’s quest, discover that any matter of a venomous kind was present
in it. For, as was natural, in the great Swelling and Blackness of the Corpse,
there was talk made among the Neighbours of Poyson. The Body was very
much Disorder’d as it laid in the Bed, being twisted after so extream a sort
as gave too probable Conjecture that my worthy Friend and Patron had
expir’d in great Pain and Agony. And what is as yet unexplain’d, and to
myself the Argument of some Horrid and Artfull Designe in the Perpetrators
of this Barbarous Murther, was this, that the Women which were entrusted
with the laying-out of the Corpse and washing it, being both sad Persons
and very well Respected in their Mournfull Profession, came to me in a
great Pain and Distress both of Mind and Body, saying, what was indeed
confirmed upon the first View, that they had no sooner touch’d the Breast of
the Corpse with their naked Hands than they were sensible of a more than
ordinary violent Smart and Acheing in their Palms, which, with their whole
Forearms, in no long time swell’d so immoderately, the Pain still
continuing, that, as afterwards proved, during many weeks they were forc’d
to lay by the exercise of their Calling; and yet no mark seen on the Skin.
“Upon hearing this, I sent for the Physician, who was still in the House,
and we made as carefull a Proof as we were able by the Help of a small
Magnifying Lens of Crystal of the condition of the Skinn on this Part of the
Body: but could not detect with the Instrument we had any Matter of
Importance beyond a couple of small Punctures or Pricks, which we then
concluded were the Spotts by which the Poyson might be introduced,
remembering that Ring of Pope Borgia, with other known Specimens of the
Horrid Art of the Italian Poysoners of the last age.
“So much is to be said of the Symptoms seen on the Corpse. As to what I
am to add, it is meerly my own Experiment, and to be left to Posterity to
judge whether there be anything of Value therein. There was on the Table by
the Beddside a Bible of the small size, in which my Friend—punctuall as in
Matters of less Moment, so in this more weighty one—used nightly, and
upon his First Rising, to read a sett Portion. And I taking it up—not without
a Tear duly paid to him wich from the Study of this poorer Adumbration
was now pass’d to the contemplation of its great Originall—it came into my
Thoughts, as at such moments of Helplessness we are prone to catch at any
the least Glimmer that makes promise of Light, to make trial of that old and
by many accounted Superstitious Practice of drawing the Sortes; of which a
Principall Instance, in the case of his late Sacred Majesty the Blessed

Martyr King Charles and my Lord Falkland, was now much talked of. I
must needs admit that by my Trial not much Assistance was afforded me:
yet, as the Cause and Origin of these Dreadfull Events may hereafter be
search’d out, I set down the Results, in the case it may be found that they
pointed the true Quarter of the Mischief to a quicker Intelligence than my
own.
“I made, then, three trials, opening the Book and placing my Finger upon
certain Words: which gave in the first these words, from Luke xiii. 7, Cut it
down; in the second, Isaiah xiii. 20, It shall never be inhabited; and upon
the third Experiment, Job xxxix. 30, Her young ones also suck up blood.”
This is all that need be quoted from Mr Crome’s papers. Sir Matthew Fell
was duly coffined and laid into the earth, and his funeral sermon, preached
by Mr Crome on the following Sunday, has been printed under the title of
“The Unsearchable Way; or, England’s Danger and the Malicious Dealings
of Antichrist”, it being the Vicar’s view, as well as that most commonly held
in the neighbourhood, that the Squire was the victim of a recrudescence of
the Popish Plot.
His son, Sir Matthew the second, succeeded to the title and estates. And
so ends the first act of the Castringham tragedy. It is to be mentioned,
though the fact is not surprising, that the new Baronet did not occupy the
room in which his father had died. Nor, indeed, was it slept in by anyone
but an occasional visitor during the whole of his occupation. He died in
1735, and I do not find that anything particular marked his reign, save a
curiously constant mortality among his cattle and live-stock in general,
which showed a tendency to increase slightly as time went on.
Those who are interested in the details will find a statistical account in a
letter to the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1772, which draws the facts from the
Baronet’s own papers. He put an end to it at last by a very simple expedient,
that of shutting up all his beasts in sheds at night, and keeping no sheep in
his park. For he had noticed that nothing was ever attacked that spent the
night indoors. After that the disorder confined itself to wild birds, and
beasts of chase. But as we have no good account of the symptoms, and as
all-night watching was quite unproductive of any clue, I do not dwell on
what the Suffolk farmers called the “Castringham sickness”.
The second Sir Matthew died in 1735, as I said, and was duly succeeded
by his son, Sir Richard. It was in his time that the great family pew was

built out on the north side of the parish church. So large were the Squire’s
ideas that several of the graves on that unhallowed side of the building had
to be disturbed to satisfy his requirements. Among them was that of Mrs
Mothersole, the position of which was accurately known, thanks to a note
on a plan of the church and yard, both made by Mr Crome.
A certain amount of interest was excited in the village when it was
known that the famous witch, who was still remembered by a few, was to
be exhumed. And the feeling of surprise, and indeed disquiet, was very
strong when it was found that, though her coffin was fairly sound and
unbroken, there was no trace whatever inside it of body, bones, or dust.
Indeed, it is a curious phenomenon, for at the time of her burying no such
things were dreamt of as resurrection-men, and it is difficult to conceive
any rational motive for stealing a body otherwise than for the uses of the
dissecting-room.
The incident revived for a time all the stories of witch-trials and of the
exploits of the witches, dormant for forty years, and Sir Richard’s orders
that the coffin should be burnt were thought by a good many to be rather
foolhardy, though they were duly carried out.
Sir Richard was a pestilent innovator, it is certain. Before his time the
Hall had been a fine block of the mellowest red brick; but Sir Richard had
travelled in Italy and become infected with the Italian taste, and, having
more money than his predecessors, he determined to leave an Italian palace
where he had found an English house. So stucco and ashlar masked the
brick; some indifferent Roman marbles were planted about in the entrance-
hall and gardens; a reproduction of the Sibyl’s temple at Tivoli was erected
on the opposite bank of the mere; and Castringham took on an entirely new,
and, I must say, a less engaging, aspect. But it was much admired, and
served as a model to a good many of the neighbouring gentry in after-years.

One morning (it was in 1754) Sir Richard woke after a night of
discomfort. It had been windy, and his chimney had smoked persistently,
and yet it was so cold that he must keep up a fire. Also something had so
rattled about the window that no man could get a moment’s peace. Further,
there was the prospect of several guests of position arriving in the course of
the day, who would expect sport of some kind, and the inroads of the
distemper (which continued among his game) had been lately so serious

that he was afraid for his reputation as a game-preserver. But what really
touched him most nearly was the other matter of his sleepless night. He
could certainly not sleep in that room again.
That was the chief subject of his meditations at breakfast, and after it he
began a systematic examination of the rooms to see which would suit his
notions best. It was long before he found one. This had a window with an
eastern aspect and that with a northern; this door the servants would be
always passing, and he did not like the bedstead in that. No, he must have a
room with a western look-out, so that the sun could not wake him early, and
it must be out of the way of the business of the house. The housekeeper was
at the end of her resources.
“Well, Sir Richard,” she said, “you know that there is but the one room
like that in the house.”
“Which may that be?” said Sir Richard.
“And that is Sir Matthew’s—the West Chamber.”
“Well, put me in there, for there I’ll lie tonight,” said her master. “Which
way is it? Here, to be sure;” and he hurried off.
“Oh, Sir Richard, but no one has slept there these forty years. The air has
hardly been changed since Sir Matthew died there.”
Thus she spoke, and rustled after him.
“Come, open the door, Mrs Chiddock. I’ll see the chamber, at least.”
So it was opened, and, indeed, the smell was very close and earthy. Sir
Richard crossed to the window, and, impatiently, as was his wont, threw the
shutters back, and flung open the casement. For this end of the house was
one which the alterations had barely touched, grown up as it was with the
great ash-tree, and being otherwise concealed from view.
“Air it, Mrs Chiddock, all today, and move my bed-furniture in in the
afternoon. Put the Bishop of Kilmore in my old room.”
“Pray, Sir Richard,” said a new voice, breaking in on this speech, “might
I have the favour of a moment’s interview?”
Sir Richard turned round and saw a man in black in the doorway, who
bowed.
“I must ask your indulgence for this intrusion, Sir Richard. You will,
perhaps, hardly remember me. My name is William Crome, and my

grandfather was Vicar here in your grandfather’s time.”
“Well, sir,” said Sir Richard, “the name of Crome is always a passport to
Castringham. I am glad to renew a friendship of two generations” standing.
In what can I serve you? for your hour of calling—and, if I do not mistake
you, your bearing—shows you to be in some haste.”
“That is no more than the truth, sir. I am riding from Norwich to Bury St
Edmunds with what haste I can make, and I have called in on my way to
leave with you some papers which we have but just come upon in looking
over what my grandfather left at his death. It is thought you may find some
matters of family interest in them.”
“You are mighty obliging, Mr Crome, and, if you will be so good as to
follow me to the parlour, and drink a glass of wine, we will take a first look
at these same papers together. And you, Mrs Chiddock, as I said, be about
airing this chamber…. Yes, it is here my grandfather died…. Yes, the tree,
perhaps, does make the place a little dampish…. No; I do not wish to listen
to any more. Make no difficulties, I beg. You have your orders—go. Will
you follow me, sir?”
They went to the study. The packet which young Mr Crome had brought
—he was then just become a Fellow of Clare Hall in Cambridge, I may say,
and subsequently brought out a respectable edition of Polyaenus—
contained among other things the notes which the old Vicar had made upon
the occasion of Sir Matthew Fell’s death. And for the first time Sir Richard
was confronted with the enigmatical Sortes Biblicæ which you have heard.
They amused him a good deal.
“Well,” he said, “my grandfather’s Bible gave one prudent piece of
advice—Cut it down. If that stands for the ash-tree, he may rest assured I
shall not neglect it. Such a nest of catarrhs and agues was never seen.”
The parlour contained the family books, which, pending the arrival of a
collection which Sir Richard had made in Italy, and the building of a proper
room to receive them, were not many in number.
Sir Richard looked up from the paper to the bookcase.
“I wonder,” says he, “whether the old prophet is there yet? I fancy I see
him.”
Crossing the room, he took out a dumpy Bible, which, sure enough, bore
on the flyleaf the inscription: “To Matthew Fell, from his Loving

Godmother, Anne Aldous, 2 September, 1659.”
“It would be no bad plan to test him again, Mr Crome. I will wager we
get a couple of names in the Chronicles. H’m! what have we here? ‘Thou
shalt seek me in the morning, and I shall not be.’ Well, well! Your
grandfather would have made a fine omen of that, hey? No more prophets
for me! They are all in a tale. And now, Mr Crome, I am infinitely obliged
to you for your packet. You will, I fear, be impatient to get on. Pray allow
me—another glass.”
So with offers of hospitality, which were genuinely meant (for Sir
Richard thought well of the young man’s address and manner), they parted.
In the afternoon came the guests—the Bishop of Kilmore, Lady Mary
Hervey, Sir William Kentfield, etc. Dinner at five, wine, cards, supper, and
dispersal to bed.
Next morning Sir Richard is disinclined to take his gun with the rest. He
talks with the Bishop of Kilmore. This prelate, unlike a good many of the
Irish Bishops of his day, had visited his see, and, indeed, resided there, for
some considerable time. This morning, as the two were walking along the
terrace and talking over the alterations and improvements in the house, the
Bishop said, pointing to the window of the West Room:
“You could never get one of my Irish flock to occupy that room, Sir
Richard.”
“Why is that, my lord? It is, in fact, my own.”
“Well, our Irish peasantry will always have it that it brings the worst of
luck to sleep near an ash-tree, and you have a fine growth of ash not two
yards from your chamber window. Perhaps,” the Bishop went on, with a
smile, “it has given you a touch of its quality already, for you do not seem,
if I may say it, so much the fresher for your night’s rest as your friends
would like to see you.”
“That, or something else, it is true, cost me my sleep from twelve to four,
my lord. But the tree is to come down tomorrow, so I shall not hear much
more from it.”
“I applaud your determination. It can hardly be wholesome to have the
air you breathe strained, as it were, through all that leafage.”
“Your lordship is right there, I think. But I had not my window open last
night. It was rather the noise that went on—no doubt from the twigs

sweeping the glass—that kept me open-eyed.”
“I think that can hardly be, Sir Richard. Here—you see it from this point.
None of these nearest branches even can touch your casement unless there
were a gale, and there was none of that last night. They miss the panes by a
foot.”
“No, sir, true. What, then, will it be, I wonder, that scratched and rustled
so—ay, and covered the dust on my sill with lines and marks?”
At last they agreed that the rats must have come up through the ivy. That
was the Bishop’s idea, and Sir Richard jumped at it.
So the day passed quietly, and night came, and the party dispersed to
their rooms, and wished Sir Richard a better night.
And now we are in his bedroom, with the light out and the Squire in bed.
The room is over the kitchen, and the night outside still and warm, so the
window stands open.
There is very little light about the bedstead, but there is a strange
movement there; it seems as if Sir Richard were moving his head rapidly to
and fro with only the slightest possible sound. And now you would guess,
so deceptive is the half-darkness, that he had several heads, round and
brownish, which move back and forward, even as low as his chest. It is a
horrible illusion. Is it nothing more? There! something drops off the bed
with a soft plump, like a kitten, and is out of the window in a flash; another
—four—and after that there is quiet again.

“Thou shalt seek me in the morning, and I shall not be.”

As with Sir Matthew, so with Sir Richard—dead and black in his bed!
A pale and silent party of guests and servants gathered under the window
when the news was known. Italian poisoners, Popish emissaries, infected air
—all these and more guesses were hazarded, and the Bishop of Kilmore
looked at the tree, in the fork of whose lower boughs a white tom-cat was
crouching, looking down the hollow which years had gnawed in the trunk.
It was watching something inside the tree with great interest.
Suddenly it got up and craned over the hole. Then a bit of the edge on
which it stood gave way, and it went slithering in. Everyone looked up at
the noise of the fall.

It is known to most of us that a cat can cry; but few of us have heard, I
hope, such a yell as came out of the trunk of the great ash. Two or three
screams there were—the witnesses are not sure which—and then a slight
and muffled noise of some commotion or struggling was all that came. But
Lady Mary Hervey fainted outright, and the housekeeper stopped her ears
and fled till she fell on the terrace.
The Bishop of Kilmore and Sir William Kentfield stayed. Yet even they
were daunted, though it was only at the cry of a cat; and Sir William
swallowed once or twice before he could say:
“There is something more than we know of in that tree, my lord. I am for
an instant search.”
And this was agreed upon. A ladder was brought, and one of the
gardeners went up, and, looking down the hollow, could detect nothing but
a few dim indications of something moving. They got a lantern, and let it
down by a rope.
“We must get at the bottom of this. My life upon it, my lord, but the
secret of these terrible deaths is there.”
Up went the gardener again with the lantern, and let it down the hole
cautiously. They saw the yellow light upon his face as he bent over, and saw
his face struck with an incredulous terror and loathing before he cried out in
a dreadful voice and fell back from the ladder—where, happily, he was
caught by two of the men—letting the lantern fall inside the tree.
He was in a dead faint, and it was some time before any word could be
got from him.
By then they had something else to look at. The lantern must have broken
at the bottom, and the light in it caught upon dry leaves and rubbish that lay
there, for in a few minutes a dense smoke began to come up, and then
flame; and, to be short, the tree was in a blaze.
The bystanders made a ring at some yards’ distance, and Sir William and
the Bishop sent men to get what weapons and tools they could; for, clearly,
whatever might be using the tree as its lair would be forced out by the fire.
So it was. First, at the fork, they saw a round body covered with fire—the
size of a man’s head—appear very suddenly, then seem to collapse and fall
back. This, five or six times; then a similar ball leapt into the air and fell on
the grass, where after a moment it lay still. The Bishop went as near as he

dared to it, and saw—what but the remains of an enormous spider, veinous
and seared! And, as the fire burned lower down, more terrible bodies like
this began to break out from the trunk, and it was seen that these were
covered with greyish hair.
All that day the ash burned, and until it fell to pieces the men stood about
it, and from time to time killed the brutes as they darted out. At last there
was a long interval when none appeared, and they cautiously closed in and
examined the roots of the tree.
“They found,” says the Bishop of Kilmore, “below it a rounded hollow
place in the earth, wherein were two or three bodies of these creatures that
had plainly been smothered by the smoke; and, what is to me more curious,
at the side of this den, against the wall, was crouching the anatomy or
skeleton of a human being, with the skin dried upon the bones, having some
remains of black hair, which was pronounced by those that examined it to
be undoubtedly the body of a woman, and clearly dead for a period of fifty
years.”

NUMBER 13

Among the towns of Jutland, Viborg justly holds a high place. It is the
seat of a bishopric; it has a handsome but almost entirely new cathedral, a
charming garden, a lake of great beauty, and many storks. Near it is Hald,
accounted one of the prettiest things in Denmark; and hard by is Finderup,
where Marsk Stig murdered King Erik Glipping on St Cecilia’s Day, in the
year 1286. Fifty-six blows of square-headed iron maces were traced on
Erik’s skull when his tomb was opened in the seventeenth century. But I am
not writing a guide-book.
There are good hotels in Viborg—Preisler’s and the Phœnix are all that
can be desired. But my cousin, whose experiences I have to tell you now,
went to the Golden Lion the first time that he visited Viborg. He has not
been there since, and the following pages will, perhaps, explain the reason
of his abstention.
The Golden Lion is one of the very few houses in the town that were not
destroyed in the great fire of 1726, which practically demolished the
cathedral, the Sognekirke, the Raadhuus, and so much else that was old and
interesting. It is a great red-brick house—that is, the front is of brick, with
corbie steps on the gables and a text over the door; but the courtyard into
which the omnibus drives is of black and white wood and plaster.
The sun was declining in the heavens when my cousin walked up to the
door, and the light smote full upon the imposing façade of the house. He
was delighted with the old-fashioned aspect of the place, and promised
himself a thoroughly satisfactory and amusing stay in an inn so typical of
old Jutland.
It was not business in the ordinary sense of the word that had brought Mr
Anderson to Viborg. He was engaged upon some researches into the Church
history of Denmark, and it had come to his knowledge that in the Rigsarkiv
of Viborg there were papers, saved from the fire, relating to the last days of

Roman Catholicism in the country. He proposed, therefore, to spend a
considerable time—perhaps as much as a fortnight or three weeks—in
examining and copying these, and he hoped that the Golden Lion would be
able to give him a room of sufficient size to serve alike as a bedroom and a
study. His wishes were explained to the landlord, and, after a certain
amount of thought, the latter suggested that perhaps it might be the best
way for the gentleman to look at one or two of the larger rooms and pick
one for himself. It seemed a good idea.
The top floor was soon rejected as entailing too much getting upstairs
after the day’s work; the second floor contained no room of exactly the
dimensions required; but on the first floor there was a choice of two or three
rooms which would, so far as size went, suit admirably.
The landlord was strongly in favour of Number 17, but Mr Anderson
pointed out that its windows commanded only the blank wall of the next
house, and that it would be very dark in the afternoon. Either Number 12 or
Number 14 would be better, for both of them looked on the street, and the
bright evening light and the pretty view would more than compensate him
for the additional amount of noise.
Eventually Number 12 was selected. Like its neighbours, it had three
windows, all on one side of the room; it was fairly high and unusually long.
There was, of course, no fireplace, but the stove was handsome and rather
old—a cast-iron erection, on the side of which was a representation of
Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and the inscription, “1 Bog Mose, Cap. 22,”
above. Nothing else in the room was remarkable; the only interesting
picture was an old coloured print of the town, date about 1820.
Supper-time was approaching, but when Anderson, refreshed by the
ordinary ablutions, descended the staircase, there were still a few minutes
before the bell rang. He devoted them to examining the list of his fellow-
lodgers. As is usual in Denmark, their names were displayed on a large
blackboard, divided into columns and lines, the numbers of the rooms being
painted in at the beginning of each line. The list was not exciting. There was
an advocate, or Sagförer, a German, and some bagmen from Copenhagen.
The one and only point which suggested any food for thought was the
absence of any Number 13 from the tale of the rooms, and even this was a
thing which Anderson had already noticed half a dozen times in his
experience of Danish hotels. He could not help wondering whether the

objection to that particular number, common as it is, was so widespread and
so strong as to make it difficult to let a room so ticketed, and he resolved to
ask the landlord if he and his colleagues in the profession had actually met
with many clients who refused to be accommodated in the thirteenth room.
He had nothing to tell me (I am giving the story as I heard it from him)
about what passed at supper, and the evening, which was spent in
unpacking and arranging his clothes, books, and papers, was not more
eventful. Towards eleven o’clock he resolved to go to bed, but with him, as
with a good many other people nowadays, an almost necessary preliminary
to bed, if he meant to sleep, was the reading of a few pages of print, and he
now remembered that the particular book which he had been reading in the
train, and which alone would satisfy him at that present moment, was in the
pocket of his great-coat, then hanging on a peg outside the dining-room.
To run down and secure it was the work of a moment, and, as the
passages were by no means dark, it was not difficult for him to find his way
back to his own door. So, at least, he thought; but when he arrived there,
and turned the handle, the door entirely refused to open, and he caught the
sound of a hasty movement towards it from within. He had tried the wrong
door, of course. Was his own room to the right or to the left? He glanced at
the number: it was 13. His room would be on the left; and so it was. And
not before he had been in bed for some minutes, had read his wonted three
or four pages of his book, blown out his light, and turned over to go to
sleep, did it occur to him that, whereas on the blackboard of the hotel there
had been no Number 13, there was undoubtedly a room numbered 13 in the
hotel. He felt rather sorry he had not chosen it for his own. Perhaps he
might have done the landlord a little service by occupying it, and given him
the chance of saying that a well-born English gentleman had lived in it for
three weeks and liked it very much. But probably it was used as a servant’s
room or something of the kind. After all, it was most likely not so large or
good a room as his own. And he looked drowsily about the room, which
was fairly perceptible in the half-light from the street-lamp. It was a curious
effect, he thought. Rooms usually look larger in a dim light than a full one,
but this seemed to have contracted in length and grown proportionately
higher. Well, well! sleep was more important than these vague ruminations
—and to sleep he went.

On the day after his arrival Anderson attacked the Rigsarkiv of Viborg.
He was, as one might expect in Denmark, kindly received, and access to all
that he wished to see was made as easy for him as possible. The documents
laid before him were far more numerous and interesting than he had at all
anticipated. Besides official papers, there was a large bundle of
correspondence relating to Bishop Jörgen Friis, the last Roman Catholic
who held the see, and in these there cropped up many amusing and what are
called “intimate” details of private life and individual character. There was
much talk of a house owned by the Bishop, but not inhabited by him, in the
town. Its tenant was apparently somewhat of a scandal and a stumbling-
block to the reforming party. He was a disgrace, they wrote, to the city; he
practised secret and wicked arts, and had sold his soul to the enemy. It was
of a piece with the gross corruption and superstition of the Babylonish
Church that such a viper and blood-sucking Troldmand should be
patronized and harboured by the Bishop. The Bishop met these reproaches
boldly; he protested his own abhorrence of all such things as secret arts, and
required his antagonists to bring the matter before the proper court—of
course, the spiritual court—and sift it to the bottom. No one could be more
ready and willing than himself to condemn Mag Nicolas Francken if the
evidence showed him to have been guilty of any of the crimes informally
alleged against him.
Anderson had not time to do more than glance at the next letter of the
Protestant leader, Rasmus Nielsen, before the record office was closed for
the day, but he gathered its general tenor, which was to the effect that
Christian men were now no longer bound by the decisions of Bishops of
Rome, and that the Bishop’s Court was not, and could not be, a fit or
competent tribunal to judge so grave and weighty a cause.
On leaving the office, Mr Anderson was accompanied by the old
gentleman who presided over it, and, as they walked, the conversation very
naturally turned to the papers of which I have just been speaking.
Herr Scavenius, the Archivist of Viborg, though very well informed as to
the general run of the documents under his charge, was not a specialist in
those of the Reformation period. He was much interested in what Anderson
had to tell him about them. He looked forward with great pleasure, he said,
to seeing the publication in which Mr Anderson spoke of embodying their
contents. “This house of the Bishop Friis,” he added, “it is a great puzzle to

me where it can have stood. I have studied carefully the topography of old
Viborg, but it is most unlucky—of the old terrier of the Bishop’s property
which was made in 1560, and of which we have the greater part in the
Arkiv, just the piece which had the list of the town property is missing.
Never mind. Perhaps I shall some day succeed to find him.”
After taking some exercise—I forget exactly how or where—Anderson
went back to the Golden Lion, his supper, his game of patience, and his bed.
On the way to his room it occurred to him that he had forgotten to talk to
the landlord about the omission of Number 13 from the hotel board, and
also that he might as well make sure that Number 13 did actually exist
before he made any reference to the matter.
The decision was not difficult to arrive at. There was the door with its
number as plain as could be, and work of some kind was evidently going on
inside it, for as he neared the door he could hear footsteps and voices, or a
voice, within. During the few seconds in which he halted to make sure of
the number, the footsteps ceased, seemingly very near the door, and he was
a little startled at hearing a quick hissing breathing as of a person in strong
excitement. He went on to his own room, and again he was surprised to find
how much smaller it seemed now than it had when he selected it. It was a
slight disappointment, but only slight. If he found it really not large enough,
he could very easily shift to another. In the meantime he wanted something
—as far as I remember it was a pocket-handkerchief—out of his
portmanteau, which had been placed by the porter on a very inadequate
trestle or stool against the wall at the farthest end of the room from his bed.
Here was a very curious thing: the portmanteau was not to be seen. It had
been moved by officious servants; doubtless the contents had been put in
the wardrobe. No, none of them were there. This was vexatious. The idea of
a theft he dismissed at once. Such things rarely happen in Denmark, but
some piece of stupidity had certainly been performed (which is not so
uncommon), and the stuepige must be severely spoken to. Whatever it was
that he wanted, it was not so necessary to his comfort that he could not wait
till the morning for it, and he therefore settled not to ring the bell and
disturb the servants. He went to the window—the right-hand window it was
—and looked out on the quiet street. There was a tall building opposite,
with large spaces of dead wall; no passers-by; a dark night; and very little to
be seen of any kind.

The light was behind him, and he could see his own shadow clearly cast
on the wall opposite. Also the shadow of the bearded man in Number 11 on
the left, who passed to and fro in shirtsleeves once or twice, and was seen
first brushing his hair, and later on in a nightgown. Also the shadow of the
occupant of Number 13 on the right. This might be more interesting.
Number 13 was, like himself, leaning on his elbows on the window-sill
looking out into the street. He seemed to be a tall thin man—or was it by
any chance a woman?—at least, it was someone who covered his or her
head with some kind of drapery before going to bed, and, he thought, must
be possessed of a red lamp-shade—and the lamp must be flickering very
much. There was a distinct playing up and down of a dull red light on the
opposite wall. He craned out a little to see if he could make any more of the
figure, but beyond a fold of some light, perhaps white, material on the
window-sill he could see nothing.
Now came a distant step in the street, and its approach seemed to recall
Number 13 to a sense of his exposed position, for very swiftly and suddenly
he swept aside from the window, and his red light went out. Anderson, who
had been smoking a cigarette, laid the end of it on the window-sill and went
to bed.
Next morning he was woken by the stuepige with hot water, etc. He
roused himself, and after thinking out the correct Danish words, said as
distinctly as he could:
“You must not move my portmanteau. Where is it?”
As is not uncommon, the maid laughed, and went away without making
any distinct answer.
Anderson, rather irritated, sat up in bed, intending to call her back, but he
remained sitting up, staring straight in front of him. There was his
portmanteau on its trestle, exactly where he had seen the porter put it when
he first arrived. This was a rude shock for a man who prided himself on his
accuracy of observation. How it could possibly have escaped him the night
before he did not pretend to understand; at any rate, there it was now.
The daylight showed more than the portmanteau; it let the true
proportions of the room with its three windows appear, and satisfied its
tenant that his choice after all had not been a bad one. When he was almost
dressed he walked to the middle one of the three windows to look out at the
weather. Another shock awaited him. Strangely unobservant he must have

been last night. He could have sworn ten times over that he had been
smoking at the right-hand window the last thing before he went to bed, and
here was his cigarette-end on the sill of the middle window.
He started to go down to breakfast. Rather late, but Number 13 was later:
here were his boots still outside his door—a gentleman’s boots. So then
Number 13 was a man, not a woman. Just then he caught sight of the
number on the door. It was 14. He thought he must have passed Number 13
without noticing it. Three stupid mistakes in twelve hours were too much
for a methodical, accurate-minded man, so he turned back to make sure.
The next number to 14 was number 12, his own room. There was no
Number 13 at all.
After some minutes devoted to a careful consideration of everything he
had had to eat and drink during the last twenty-four hours, Anderson
decided to give the question up. If his eyes or his brain were giving way he
would have plenty of opportunities for ascertaining that fact; if not, then he
was evidently being treated to a very interesting experience. In either case
the development of events would certainly be worth watching.
During the day he continued his examination of the episcopal
correspondence which I have already summarized. To his disappointment, it
was incomplete. Only one other letter could be found which referred to the
affair of Mag Nicolas Francken. It was from the Bishop Jörgen Friis to
Rasmus Nielsen. He said:
“Although we are not in the least degree inclined to assent to your
judgement concerning our court, and shall be prepared if need be to
withstand you to the uttermost in that behalf, yet forasmuch as our trusty
and well-beloved Mag Nicolas Francken, against whom you have dared to
allege certain false and malicious charges, hath been suddenly removed
from among us, it is apparent that the question for this time falls. But
forasmuch as you further allege that the Apostle and Evangelist St John in
his heavenly Apocalypse describes the Holy Roman Church under the guise
and symbol of the Scarlet Woman, be it known to you,” etc.
Search as he might, Anderson could find no sequel to this letter nor any
clue to the cause or manner of the “removal” of the casus belli. He could
only suppose that Francken had died suddenly; and as there were only two
days between the date of Nielsen’s last letter—when Francken was

evidently still in being—and that of the Bishop’s letter, the death must have
been completely unexpected.
In the afternoon he paid a short visit to Hald, and took his tea at
Baekkelund; nor could he notice, though he was in a somewhat nervous
frame of mind, that there was any indication of such a failure of eye or
brain as his experiences of the morning had led him to fear.
At supper he found himself next to the landlord.
“What,” he asked him, after some indifferent conversation, “is the reason
why in most of the hotels one visits in this country the number thirteen is
left out of the list of rooms? I see you have none here.”
The landlord seemed amused.
“To think that you should have noticed a thing like that! I’ve thought
about it once or twice myself, to tell the truth. An educated man, I’ve said,
has no business with these superstitious notions. I was brought up myself
here in the high school of Viborg, and our old master was always a man to
set his face against anything of that kind. He’s been dead now this many
years—a fine upstanding man he was, and ready with his hands as well as
his head. I recollect us boys, one snowy day—”
Here he plunged into reminiscence.
“Then you don’t think there is any particular objection to having a
Number 13?” said Anderson.
“Ah! to be sure. Well, you understand, I was brought up to the business
by my poor old father. He kept an hotel in Aarhuus first, and then, when we
were born, he moved to Viborg here, which was his native place, and had
the Phœnix here until he died. That was in 1876. Then I started business in
Silkeborg, and only the year before last I moved into this house.”
Then followed more details as to the state of the house and business
when first taken over.
“And when you came here, was there a Number 13?”
“No, no. I was going to tell you about that. You see, in a place like this,
the commercial class—the travellers—are what we have to provide for in
general. And put them in Number 13? Why, they’d as soon sleep in the
street, or sooner. As far as I’m concerned myself, it wouldn’t make a penny
difference to me what the number of my room was, and so I’ve often said to
them; but they stick to it that it brings them bad luck. Quantities of stories

they have among them of men that have slept in a Number 13 and never
been the same again, or lost their best customers, or—one thing and
another,” said the landlord, after searching for a more graphic phrase.
“Then, what do you use your Number 13 for?” said Anderson, conscious
as he said the words of a curious anxiety quite disproportionate to the
importance of the question.
“My Number 13? Why, don’t I tell you that there isn’t such a thing in the
house? I thought you might have noticed that. If there was it would be next
door to your own room.”
“Well, yes; only I happened to think—that is, I fancied last night that I
had seen a door numbered thirteen in that passage; and, really, I am almost
certain I must have been right, for I saw it the night before as well.”
Of course, Herr Kristensen laughed this notion to scorn, as Anderson had
expected, and emphasized with much iteration the fact that no Number 13
existed or had existed before him in that hotel.
Anderson was in some ways relieved by his certainty, but still puzzled,
and he began to think that the best way to make sure whether he had indeed
been subject to an illusion or not was to invite the landlord to his room to
smoke a cigar later on in the evening. Some photographs of English towns
which he had with him formed a sufficiently good excuse.
Herr Kristensen was flattered by the invitation, and most willingly
accepted it. At about ten o’clock he was to make his appearance, but before
that Anderson had some letters to write, and retired for the purpose of
writing them. He almost blushed to himself at confessing it, but he could
not deny that it was the fact that he was becoming quite nervous about the
question of the existence of Number 13; so much so that he approached his
room by way of Number 11, in order that he might not be obliged to pass
the door, or the place where the door ought to be. He looked quickly and
suspiciously about the room when he entered it, but there was nothing,
beyond that indefinable air of being smaller than usual, to warrant any
misgivings. There was no question of the presence or absence of his
portmanteau tonight. He had himself emptied it of its contents and lodged it
under his bed. With a certain effort he dismissed the thought of Number 13
from his mind, and sat down to his writing.
His neighbours were quiet enough. Occasionally a door opened in the
passage and a pair of boots was thrown out, or a bagman walked past

humming to himself, and outside, from time to time, a cart thundered over
the atrocious cobble-stones, or a quick step hurried along the flags.
Anderson finished his letters, ordered in whisky and soda, and then went
to the window and studied the dead wall opposite and the shadows upon it.
As far as he could remember, Number 14 had been occupied by the
lawyer, a staid man, who said little at meals, being generally engaged in
studying a small bundle of papers beside his plate. Apparently, however, he
was in the habit of giving vent to his animal spirits when alone. Why else
should he be dancing? The shadow from the next room evidently showed
that he was. Again and again his thin form crossed the window, his arms
waved, and a gaunt leg was kicked up with surprising agility. He seemed to
be barefooted, and the floor must be well laid, for no sound betrayed his
movements. Sagförer Herr Anders Jensen, dancing at ten o’clock at night in
a hotel bedroom, seemed a fitting subject for a historical painting in the
grand style; and Anderson’s thoughts, like those of Emily in the “Mysteries
of Udolpho”, began to “arrange themselves in the following lines”:
“When I return to my hotel,
At ten o’clock p.m.,
The waiters think I am unwell;
I do not care for them.
But when I’ve locked my chamber door,
And put my boots outside,
I dance all night upon the floor.
And even if my neighbours swore,
I’d go on dancing all the more,
For I’m acquainted with the law,
And in despite of all their jaw,
Their protests I deride.”

Had not the landlord at this moment knocked at the door, it is probable
that quite a long poem might have been laid before the reader. To judge
from his look of surprise when he found himself in the room, Herr
Kristensen was struck, as Anderson had been, by something unusual in its
aspect. But he made no remark. Anderson’s photographs interested him
mightily, and formed the text of many autobiographical discourses. Nor is it
quite clear how the conversation could have been diverted into the desired
channel of Number 13, had not the lawyer at this moment begun to sing,
and to sing in a manner which could leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that
he was either exceedingly drunk or raving mad. It was a high, thin voice

that they heard, and it seemed dry, as if from long disuse. Of words or tune
there was no question. It went sailing up to a surprising height, and was
carried down with a despairing moan as of a winter wind in a hollow
chimney, or an organ whose wind fails suddenly. It was a really horrible
sound, and Anderson felt that if he had been alone he must have fled for
refuge and society to some neighbour bagman’s room.
The landlord sat open-mouthed.
“I don’t understand it,” he said at last, wiping his forehead. “It is
dreadful. I have heard it once before, but I made sure it was a cat.”
“Is he mad?” said Anderson.
“He must be; and what a sad thing! Such a good customer, too, and so
successful in his business, by what I hear, and a young family to bring up.”
Just then came an impatient knock at the door, and the knocker entered,
without waiting to be asked. It was the lawyer, in déshabille and very
rough-haired; and very angry he looked.
“I beg pardon, sir,” he said, “but I should be much obliged if you would
kindly desist—”
Here he stopped, for it was evident that neither of the persons before him
was responsible for the disturbance; and after a moment’s lull it swelled
forth again more wildly than before.
“But what in the name of Heaven does it mean?” broke out the lawyer.
“Where is it? Who is it? Am I going out of my mind?”
“Surely, Herr Jensen, it comes from your room next door? Isn’t there a
cat or something stuck in the chimney?”
This was the best that occurred to Anderson to say, and he realized its
futility as he spoke; but anything was better than to stand and listen to that
horrible voice, and look at the broad, white face of the landlord, all
perspiring and quivering as he clutched the arms of his chair.
“Impossible,” said the lawyer, “impossible. There is no chimney. I came
here because I was convinced the noise was going on here. It was certainly
in the next room to mine.”
“Was there no door between yours and mine?” said Anderson eagerly.
“No, sir,” said Herr Jensen, rather sharply. “At least, not this morning.”
“Ah!” said Anderson. “Nor tonight?”

“I am not sure,” said the lawyer with some hesitation.
Suddenly the crying or singing voice in the next room died away, and the
singer was heard seemingly to laugh to himself in a crooning manner. The
three men actually shivered at the sound. Then there was a silence.
“Come,” said the lawyer, “what have you to say, Herr Kristensen? What
does this mean?”
“Good Heaven!” said Kristensen. “How should I tell! I know no more
than you, gentlemen. I pray I may never hear such a noise again.”
“So do I,” said Herr Jensen, and he added something under his breath.
Anderson thought it sounded like the last words of the Psalter, “omnis
spiritus laudet Dominum,” but he could not be sure.
“But we must do something,” said Anderson—“the three of us. Shall we
go and investigate in the next room?”
“But that is Herr Jensen’s room,” wailed the landlord. “It is no use; he
has come from there himself.”
“I am not so sure,” said Jensen. “I think this gentleman is right: we must
go and see.”
The only weapons of defence that could be mustered on the spot were a
stick and umbrella. The expedition went out into the passage, not without
quakings. There was a deadly quiet outside, but a light shone from under
the next door. Anderson and Jensen approached it. The latter turned the
handle, and gave a sudden vigorous push. No use. The door stood fast.
“Herr Kristensen,” said Jensen, “will you go and fetch the strongest
servant you have in the place? We must see this through.”
The landlord nodded, and hurried off, glad to be away from the scene of
action. Jensen and Anderson remained outside looking at the door.
“It is Number 13, you see,” said the latter.
“Yes; there is your door, and there is mine,” said Jensen.
“My room has three windows in the daytime,” said Anderson, with
difficulty suppressing a nervous laugh.
“By George, so has mine!” said the lawyer, turning and looking at
Anderson. His back was now to the door. In that moment the door opened,
and an arm came out and clawed at his shoulder. It was clad in ragged,

yellowish linen, and the bare skin, where it could be seen, had long grey
hair upon it.
Anderson was just in time to pull Jensen out of its reach with a cry of
disgust and fright, when the door shut again, and a low laugh was heard.
Jensen had seen nothing, but when Anderson hurriedly told him what a
risk he had run, he fell into a great state of agitation, and suggested that they
should retire from the enterprise and lock themselves up in one or other of
their rooms.
However, while he was developing this plan, the landlord and two able-
bodied men arrived on the scene, all looking rather serious and alarmed.
Jensen met them with a torrent of description and explanation, which did
not at all tend to encourage them for the fray.
The men dropped the crowbars they had brought, and said flatly that they
were not going to risk their throats in that devil’s den. The landlord was
miserably nervous and undecided, conscious that if the danger were not
faced his hotel was ruined, and very loth to face it himself. Luckily
Anderson hit upon a way of rallying the demoralized force.
“Is this,” he said, “the Danish courage I have heard so much of? It isn’t a
German in there, and if it was, we are five to one.”
The two servants and Jensen were stung into action by this, and made a
dash at the door.
“Stop!” said Anderson. “Don’t lose your heads. You stay out here with
the light, landlord, and one of you two men break in the door, and don’t go
in when it gives way.”
The men nodded, and the younger stepped forward, raised his crowbar,
and dealt a tremendous blow on the upper panel. The result was not in the
least what any of them anticipated. There was no cracking or rending of
wood—only a dull sound, as if the solid wall had been struck. The man
dropped his tool with a shout, and began rubbing his elbow. His cry drew
their eyes upon him for a moment; then Anderson looked at the door again.
It was gone; the plaster wall of the passage stared him in the face, with a
considerable gash in it where the crowbar had struck it. Number 13 had
passed out of existence.
For a brief space they stood perfectly still, gazing at the blank wall. An
early cock in the yard beneath was heard to crow; and as Anderson glanced

in the direction of the sound, he saw through the window at the end of the
long passage that the eastern sky was paling to the dawn.

“Perhaps,” said the landlord, with hesitation, “you gentlemen would like
another room for tonight—a double-bedded one?”
Neither Jensen nor Anderson was averse to the suggestion. They felt
inclined to hunt in couples after their late experience. It was found
convenient, when each of them went to his room to collect the articles he
wanted for the night, that the other should go with him and hold the candle.
They noticed that both Number 12 and Number 14 had three windows.

Next morning the same party reassembled in Number 12. The landlord
was naturally anxious to avoid engaging outside help, and yet it was
imperative that the mystery attaching to that part of the house should be
cleared up. Accordingly the two servants had been induced to take upon
them the function of carpenters. The furniture was cleared away, and, at the
cost of a good many irretrievably damaged planks, that portion of the floor
was taken up which lay nearest to Number 14.
You will naturally suppose that a skeleton—say that of Mag Nicolas
Francken—was discovered. That was not so. What they did find lying
between the beams which supported the flooring was a small copper box. In
it was a neatly-folded vellum document, with about twenty lines of writing.
Both Anderson and Jensen (who proved to be something of a palæographer)
were much excited by this discovery, which promised to afford the key to
these extraordinary phenomena.

I possess a copy of an astrological work which I have never read. It has,
by way of frontispiece, a woodcut by Hans Sebald Beham, representing a
number of sages seated round a table. This detail may enable connoisseurs
to identify the book. I cannot myself recollect its title, and it is not at this
moment within reach; but the fly-leaves of it are covered with writing, and,

during the ten years in which I have owned the volume, I have not been
able to determine which way up this writing ought to be read, much less in
what language it is. Not dissimilar was the position of Anderson and Jensen
after the protracted examination to which they submitted the document in
the copper box.
After two days’ contemplation of it, Jensen, who was the bolder spirit of
the two, hazarded the conjecture that the language was either Latin or Old
Danish.
Anderson ventured upon no surmises, and was very willing to surrender
the box and the parchment to the Historical Society of Viborg to be placed
in their museum.
I had the whole story from him a few months later, as we sat in a wood
near Upsala, after a visit to the library there, where we—or, rather, I—had
laughed over the contract by which Daniel Salthenius (in later life Professor
of Hebrew at Königsberg) sold himself to Satan. Anderson was not really
amused.
“Young idiot!” he said, meaning Salthenius, who was only an
undergraduate when he committed that indiscretion, “how did he know
what company he was courting?”
And when I suggested the usual considerations he only grunted. That
same afternoon he told me what you have read; but he refused to draw any
inferences from it, and to assent to any that I drew for him.

COUNT MAGNUS

By what means the papers out of which I have made a connected story
came into my hands is the last point which the reader will learn from these
pages. But it is necessary to prefix to my extracts from them a statement of
the form in which I possess them.
They consist, then, partly of a series of collections for a book of travels,
such a volume as was a common product of the forties and fifties. Horace
Marryat’s Journal of a Residence in Jutland and the Danish Isles is a fair
specimen of the class to which I allude. These books usually treated of
some unknown district on the Continent. They were illustrated with
woodcuts or steel plates. They gave details of hotel accommodation, and of
means of communication, such as we now expect to find in any well-
regulated guide-book, and they dealt largely in reported conversations with
intelligent foreigners, racy innkeepers, and garrulous peasants. In a word,
they were chatty.
Begun with the idea of furnishing material for such a book, my papers as
they progressed assumed the character of a record of one single personal
experience, and this record was continued up to the very eve, almost, of its
termination.
The writer was a Mr Wraxall. For my knowledge of him I have to depend
entirely on the evidence his writings afford, and from these I deduce that he
was a man past middle age, possessed of some private means, and very
much alone in the world. He had, it seems, no settled abode in England, but
was a denizen of hotels and boarding-houses. It is probable that he
entertained the idea of settling down at some future time which never came;
and I think it also likely that the Pantechnicon fire in the early seventies
must have destroyed a great deal that would have thrown light on his
antecedents, for he refers once or twice to property of his that was
warehoused at that establishment.

It is further apparent that Mr Wraxall had published a book, and that it
treated of a holiday he had once taken in Brittany. More than this I cannot
say about his work, because a diligent search in bibliographical works has
convinced me that it must have appeared either anonymously or under a
pseudonym.
As to his character, it is not difficult to form some superficial opinion. He
must have been an intelligent and cultivated man. It seems that he was near
being a Fellow of his college at Oxford—Brasenose, as I judge from the
Calendar. His besetting fault was pretty clearly that of over-inquisitiveness,
possibly a good fault in a traveller, certainly a fault for which this traveller
paid dearly enough in the end.
On what proved to be his last expedition, he was plotting another book.
Scandinavia, a region not widely known to Englishmen forty years ago, had
struck him as an interesting field. He must have alighted on some old books
of Swedish history or memoirs, and the idea had struck him that there was
room for a book descriptive of travel in Sweden, interspersed with episodes
from the history of some of the great Swedish families. He procured letters
of introduction, therefore, to some persons of quality in Sweden, and set out
thither in the early summer of 1863.
Of his travels in the North there is no need to speak, nor of his residence
of some weeks in Stockholm. I need only mention that some savant resident
there put him on the track of an important collection of family papers
belonging to the proprietors of an ancient manor-house in Vestergothland,
and obtained for him permission to examine them.
The manor-house, or herrgård, in question is to be called Råbäck
(pronounced something like Roebeck), though that is not its name. It is one
of the best buildings of its kind in all the country, and the picture of it in
Dahlenberg’s Suecia antiqua et moderna, engraved in 1694, shows it very
much as the tourist may see it today. It was built soon after 1600, and is,
roughly speaking, very much like an English house of that period in respect
of material—red-brick with stone facings—and style. The man who built it
was a scion of the great house of De la Gardie, and his descendants possess
it still. De la Gardie is the name by which I will designate them when
mention of them becomes necessary.
They received Mr Wraxall with great kindness and courtesy, and pressed
him to stay in the house as long as his researches lasted. But, preferring to

be independent, and mistrusting his powers of conversing in Swedish, he
settled himself at the village inn, which turned out quite sufficiently
comfortable, at any rate during the summer months. This arrangement
would entail a short walk daily to and from the manor-house of something
under a mile. The house itself stood in a park, and was protected—we
should say grown up—with large old timber. Near it you found the walled
garden, and then entered a close wood fringing one of the small lakes with
which the whole country is pitted. Then came the wall of the demesne, and
you climbed a steep knoll—a knob of rock lightly covered with soil—and
on the top of this stood the church, fenced in with tall dark trees. It was a
curious building to English eyes. The nave and aisles were low, and filled
with pews and galleries. In the western gallery stood the handsome old
organ, gaily painted, and with silver pipes. The ceiling was flat, and had
been adorned by a seventeenth-century artist with a strange and hideous
“Last Judgement”, full of lurid flames, falling cities, burning ships, crying
souls, and brown and smiling demons. Handsome brass coronae hung from
the roof; the pulpit was like a doll’s-house covered with little painted
wooden cherubs and saints; a stand with three hour-glasses was hinged to
the preacher’s desk. Such sights as these may be seen in many a church in
Sweden now, but what distinguished this one was an addition to the original
building. At the eastern end of the north aisle the builder of the manor-
house had erected a mausoleum for himself and his family. It was a largish
eight-sided building, lighted by a series of oval windows, and it had a
domed roof, topped by a kind of pumpkin-shaped object rising into a spire,
a form in which Swedish architects greatly delighted. The roof was of
copper externally, and was painted black, while the walls, in common with
those of the church, were staringly white. To this mausoleum there was no
access from the church. It had a portal and steps of its own on the northern
side.
Past the churchyard the path to the village goes, and not more than three
or four minutes bring you to the inn door.
On the first day of his stay at Råbäck Mr Wraxall found the church door
open, and made those notes of the interior which I have epitomized. Into the
mausoleum, however, he could not make his way. He could by looking
through the keyhole just descry that there were fine marble effigies and
sarcophagi of copper, and a wealth of armorial ornament, which made him
very anxious to spend some time in investigation.

The papers he had come to examine at the manor-house proved to be of
just the kind he wanted for his book. There were family correspondence,
journals, and account-books of the earliest owners of the estate, very
carefully kept and clearly written, full of amusing and picturesque detail.
The first De la Gardie appeared in them as a strong and capable man.
Shortly after the building of the mansion there had been a period of distress
in the district, and the peasants had risen and attacked several châteaux and
done some damage. The owner of Råbäck took a leading part in supressing
the trouble, and there was reference to executions of ring-leaders and severe
punishments inflicted with no sparing hand.
The portrait of this Magnus de la Gardie was one of the best in the house,
and Mr Wraxall studied it with no little interest after his day’s work. He
gives no detailed description of it, but I gather that the face impressed him
rather by its power than by its beauty or goodness; in fact, he writes that
Count Magnus was an almost phenomenally ugly man.
On this day Mr Wraxall took his supper with the family, and walked back
in the late but still bright evening.
“I must remember,” he writes, “to ask the sexton if he can let me into the
mausoleum at the church. He evidently has access to it himself, for I saw
him tonight standing on the steps, and, as I thought, locking or unlocking
the door.”
I find that early on the following day Mr Wraxall had some conversation
with his landlord. His setting it down at such length as he does surprised me
at first; but I soon realized that the papers I was reading were, at least in
their beginning, the materials for the book he was meditating, and that it
was to have been one of those quasi-journalistic productions which admit of
the introduction of an admixture of conversational matter.
His object, he says, was to find out whether any traditions of Count
Magnus de la Gardie lingered on in the scenes of that gentleman’s activity,
and whether the popular estimate of him were favourable or not. He found
that the Count was decidedly not a favourite. If his tenants came late to their
work on the days which they owed to him as Lord of the Manor, they were
set on the wooden horse, or flogged and branded in the manor-house yard.
One or two cases there were of men who had occupied lands which
encroached on the lord’s domain, and whose houses had been mysteriously
burnt on a winter’s night, with the whole family inside. But what seemed to

dwell on the innkeeper’s mind most—for he returned to the subject more
than once—was that the Count had been on the Black Pilgrimage, and had
brought something or someone back with him.
You will naturally inquire, as Mr Wraxall did, what the Black Pilgrimage
may have been. But your curiosity on the point must remain unsatisfied for
the time being, just as his did. The landlord was evidently unwilling to give
a full answer, or indeed any answer, on the point, and, being called out for a
moment, trotted out with obvious alacrity, only putting his head in at the
door a few minutes afterwards to say that he was called away to Skara, and
should not be back till evening.
So Mr Wraxall had to go unsatisfied to his day’s work at the manor-
house. The papers on which he was just then engaged soon put his thoughts
into another channel, for he had to occupy himself with glancing over the
correspondence between Sophia Albertina in Stockholm and her married
cousin Ulrica Leonora at Råbäck in the years 1705-1710. The letters were
of exceptional interest from the light they threw upon the culture of that
period in Sweden, as anyone can testify who has read the full edition of
them in the publications of the Swedish Historical Manuscripts
Commission.
In the afternoon he had done with these, and after returning the boxes in
which they were kept to their places on the shelf, he proceeded, very
naturally, to take down some of the volumes nearest to them, in order to
determine which of them had best be his principal subject of investigation
next day. The shelf he had hit upon was occupied mostly by a collection of
account-books in the writing of the first Count Magnus. But one among
them was not an account-book, but a book of alchemical and other tracts in
another sixteenth-century hand. Not being very familiar with alchemical
literature, Mr Wraxall spends much space which he might have spared in
setting out the names and beginnings of the various treatises: The book of
the Phœnix, book of the Thirty Words, book of the Toad, book of Miriam,
Turba philosophorum, and so forth; and then he announces with a good deal
of circumstance his delight at finding, on a leaf originally left blank near the
middle of the book, some writing of Count Magnus himself headed “Liber
nigræ peregrinationis”. It is true that only a few lines were written, but there
was quite enough to show that the landlord had that morning been referring

to a belief at least as old as the time of Count Magnus, and probably shared
by him. This is the English of what was written:
“If any man desires to obtain a long life, if he would obtain a faithful
messenger and see the blood of his enemies, it is necessary that he should
first go into the city of Chorazin, and there salute the prince….” Here there
was an erasure of one word, not very thoroughly done, so that Mr Wraxall
felt pretty sure that he was right in reading it as aëris (“of the air”). But
there was no more of the text copied, only a line in Latin: Quære reliqua
hujus materiei inter secretiora. (See the rest of this matter among the more
private things.)
It could not be denied that this threw a rather lurid light upon the tastes
and beliefs of the Count; but to Mr Wraxall, separated from him by nearly
three centuries, the thought that he might have added to his general
forcefulness alchemy, and to alchemy something like magic, only made him
a more picturesque figure; and when, after a rather prolonged contemplation
of his picture in the hall, Mr Wraxall set out on his homeward way, his mind
was full of the thought of Count Magnus. He had no eyes for his
surroundings, no perception of the evening scents of the woods or the
evening light on the lake; and when all of a sudden he pulled up short, he
was astonished to find himself already at the gate of the churchyard, and
within a few minutes of his dinner. His eyes fell on the mausoleum.
“Ah,” he said, “Count Magnus, there you are. I should dearly like to see
you.”
“Like many solitary men,” he writes, “I have a habit of talking to myself
aloud; and, unlike some of the Greek and Latin particles, I do not expect an
answer. Certainly, and perhaps fortunately in this case, there was neither
voice nor any that regarded: only the woman who, I suppose, was cleaning
up the church, dropped some metallic object on the floor, whose clang
startled me. Count Magnus, I think, sleeps sound enough.”
That same evening the landlord of the inn, who had heard Mr Wraxall
say that he wished to see the clerk or deacon (as he would be called in
Sweden) of the parish, introduced him to that official in the inn parlour. A
visit to the De la Gardie tomb-house was soon arranged for the next day,
and a little general conversation ensued.
Mr Wraxall, remembering that one function of Scandinavian deacons is
to teach candidates for Confirmation, thought he would refresh his own

memory on a Biblical point.
“Can you tell me,” he said, “anything about Chorazin?”
The deacon seemed startled, but readily reminded him how that village
had once been denounced.
“To be sure,” said Mr Wraxall; “it is, I suppose, quite a ruin now?”
“So I expect,” replied the deacon. “I have heard some of our old priests
say that Antichrist is to be born there; and there are tales—”
“Ah! what tales are those?” Mr Wraxall put in.
“Tales, I was going to say, which I have forgotten,” said the deacon; and
soon after that he said good night.
The landlord was now alone, and at Mr Wraxall’s mercy; and that
inquirer was not inclined to spare him.
“Herr Nielsen,” he said, “I have found out something about the Black
Pilgrimage. You may as well tell me what you know. What did the Count
bring back with him?”
Swedes are habitually slow, perhaps, in answering, or perhaps the
landlord was an exception. I am not sure; but Mr Wraxall notes that the
landlord spent at least one minute in looking at him before he said anything
at all. Then he came close up to his guest, and with a good deal of effort he
spoke:
“Mr Wraxall, I can tell you this one little tale, and no more—not any
more. You must not ask anything when I have done. In my grandfather’s
time—that is, ninety-two years ago—there were two men who said: ‘The
Count is dead; we do not care for him. We will go tonight and have a free
hunt in his wood’—the long wood on the hill that you have seen behind
Råbäck. Well, those that heard them say this, they said: ‘No, do not go; we
are sure you will meet with persons walking who should not be walking.
They should be resting, not walking.’ These men laughed. There were no
forestmen to keep the wood, because no one wished to live there. The
family were not here at the house. These men could do what they wished.
“Very well, they go to the wood that night. My grandfather was sitting
here in this room. It was the summer, and a light night. With the window
open, he could see out to the wood, and hear.

“So he sat there, and two or three men with him, and they listened. At
first they hear nothing at all; then they hear someone—you know how far
away it is—they hear someone scream, just as if the most inside part of his
soul was twisted out of him. All of them in the room caught hold of each
other, and they sat so for three-quarters of an hour. Then they hear someone
else, only about three hundred ells off. They hear him laugh out loud: it was
not one of those two men that laughed, and, indeed, they have all of them
said that it was not any man at all. After that they hear a great door shut.
“Then, when it was just light with the sun, they all went to the priest.
They said to him:
“‘Father, put on your gown and your ruff, and come to bury these men,
Anders Bjornsen and Hans Thorbjorn.’
“You understand that they were sure these men were dead. So they went
to the wood—my grandfather never forgot this. He said they were all like so
many dead men themselves. The priest, too, he was in a white fear. He said
when they came to him:
“‘I heard one cry in the night, and I heard one laugh afterwards. If I
cannot forget that, I shall not be able to sleep again.’
“So they went to the wood, and they found these men on the edge of the
wood. Hans Thorbjorn was standing with his back against a tree, and all the
time he was pushing with his hands—pushing something away from him
which was not there. So he was not dead. And they led him away, and took
him to the house at Nykjoping, and he died before the winter; but he went
on pushing with his hands. Also Anders Bjornsen was there; but he was
dead. And I tell you this about Anders Bjornsen, that he was once a
beautiful man, but now his face was not there, because the flesh of it was
sucked away off the bones. You understand that? My grandfather did not
forget that. And they laid him on the bier which they brought, and they put a
cloth over his head, and the priest walked before; and they began to sing the
psalm for the dead as well as they could. So, as they were singing the end of
the first verse, one fell down, who was carrying the head of the bier, and the
others looked back, and they saw that the cloth had fallen off, and the eyes
of Anders Bjornsen were looking up, because there was nothing to close
over them. And this they could not bear. Therefore the priest laid the cloth
upon him, and sent for a spade, and they buried him in that place.”

The next day Mr Wraxall records that the deacon called for him soon
after his breakfast, and took him to the church and mausoleum. He noticed
that the key of the latter was hung on a nail just by the pulpit, and it
occurred to him that, as the church door seemed to be left unlocked as a
rule, it would not be difficult for him to pay a second and more private visit
to the monuments if there proved to be more of interest among them than
could be digested at first. The building, when he entered it, he found not
unimposing. The monuments, mostly large erections of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, were dignified if luxuriant, and the epitaphs and
heraldry were copious. The central space of the domed room was occupied
by three copper sarcophagi, covered with finely-engraved ornament. Two of
them had, as is commonly the case in Denmark and Sweden, a large metal
crucifix on the lid. The third, that of Count Magnus, as it appeared, had,
instead of that, a full-length effigy engraved upon it, and round the edge
were several bands of similar ornament representing various scenes. One
was a battle, with cannon belching out smoke, and walled towns, and troops
of pikemen. Another showed an execution. In a third, among trees, was a
man running at full speed, with flying hair and outstretched hands. After
him followed a strange form; it would be hard to say whether the artist had
intended it for a man, and was unable to give the requisite similitude, or
whether it was intentionally made as monstrous as it looked. In view of the
skill with which the rest of the drawing was done, Mr Wraxall felt inclined
to adopt the latter idea. The figure was unduly short, and was for the most
part muffled in a hooded garment which swept the ground. The only part of
the form which projected from that shelter was not shaped like any hand or
arm. Mr Wraxall compares it to the tentacle of a devil-fish, and continues:
“On seeing this, I said to myself, ‘This, then, which is evidently an
allegorical representation of some kind—a fiend pursuing a hunted soul—
may be the origin of the story of Count Magnus and his mysterious
companion. Let us see how the huntsman is pictured: doubtless it will be a
demon blowing his horn.”’ But, as it turned out, there was no such
sensational figure, only the semblance of a cloaked man on a hillock, who
stood leaning on a stick, and watching the hunt with an interest which the
engraver had tried to express in his attitude.
Mr Wraxall noted the finely-worked and massive steel padlocks—three
in number—which secured the sarcophagus. One of them, he saw, was
detached, and lay on the pavement. And then, unwilling to delay the deacon

longer or to waste his own working-time, he made his way onward to the
manor-house.
“It is curious,” he notes, “how, on retracing a familiar path, one’s
thoughts engross one to the absolute exclusion of surrounding objects.
Tonight, for the second time, I had entirely failed to notice where I was
going (I had planned a private visit to the tomb-house to copy the epitaphs),
when I suddenly, as it were, awoke to consciousness, and found myself (as
before) turning in at the churchyard gate, and, I believe, singing or chanting
some such words as, ‘Are you awake, Count Magnus? Are you asleep,
Count Magnus?’ and then something more which I have failed to recollect.
It seemed to me that I must have been behaving in this nonsensical way for
some time.”
He found the key of the mausoleum where he had expected to find it, and
copied the greater part of what he wanted; in fact, he stayed until the light
began to fail him.
“I must have been wrong,” he writes, “in saying that one of the padlocks
of my Count’s sarcophagus was unfastened; I see tonight that two are loose.
I picked both up, and laid them carefully on the window-ledge, after trying
unsuccessfully to close them. The remaining one is still firm, and, though I
take it to be a spring lock, I cannot guess how it is opened. Had I succeeded
in undoing it, I am almost afraid I should have taken the liberty of opening
the sarcophagus. It is strange, the interest I feel in the personality of this, I
fear, somewhat ferocious and grim old noble.”
The day following was, as it turned out, the last of Mr Wraxall’s stay at
Råbäck. He received letters connected with certain investments which made
it desirable that he should return to England; his work among the papers
was practically done, and travelling was slow. He decided, therefore, to
make his farewells, put some finishing touches to his notes, and be off.
These finishing touches and farewells, as it turned out, took more time
than he had expected. The hospitable family insisted on his staying to dine
with them—they dined at three—and it was verging on half past six before
he was outside the iron gates of Råbäck. He dwelt on every step of his walk
by the lake, determined to saturate himself, now that he trod it for the last
time, in the sentiment of the place and hour. And when he reached the
summit of the churchyard knoll, he lingered for many minutes, gazing at the
limitless prospect of woods near and distant, all dark beneath a sky of liquid

green. When at last he turned to go, the thought struck him that surely he
must bid farewell to Count Magnus as well as the rest of the De la Gardies.
The church was but twenty yards away, and he knew where the key of the
mausoleum hung. It was not long before he was standing over the great
copper coffin, and, as usual, talking to himself aloud. “You may have been a
bit of a rascal in your time, Magnus,” he was saying, “but for all that I
should like to see you, or, rather—”
“Just at that instant,” he says, “I felt a blow on my foot. Hastily enough I
drew it back, and something fell on the pavement with a clash. It was the
third, the last of the three padlocks which had fastened the sarcophagus. I
stooped to pick it up, and—Heaven is my witness that I am writing only the
bare truth—before I had raised myself there was a sound of metal hinges
creaking, and I distinctly saw the lid shifting upwards. I may have behaved
like a coward, but I could not for my life stay for one moment. I was
outside that dreadful building in less time than I can write—almost as
quickly as I could have said—the words; and what frightens me yet more, I
could not turn the key in the lock. As I sit here in my room noting these
facts, I ask myself (it was not twenty minutes ago) whether that noise of
creaking metal continued, and I cannot tell whether it did or not. I only
know that there was something more than I have written that alarmed me,
but whether it was sound or sight I am not able to remember. What is this
that I have done?”
Poor Mr Wraxall! He set out on his journey to England on the next day,
as he had planned, and he reached England in safety; and yet, as I gather
from his changed hand and inconsequent jottings, a broken man. One of
several small note-books that have come to me with his papers gives, not a
key to, but a kind of inkling of, his experiences. Much of his journey was
made by canal-boat, and I find not less than six painful attempts to
enumerate and describe his fellow-passengers. The entries are of this kind:

24. Pastor of village in Skåne. Usual black coat and soft
black hat.
25. Commercial traveller from Stockholm going to
Trollhättan. Black cloak, brown hat.
26. Man in long black cloak, broad-leafed hat, very old-
fashioned.

This entry is lined out, and a note added: “Perhaps identical with No. 13.
Have not yet seen his face.” On referring to No. 13, I find that he is a
Roman priest in a cassock.
The net result of the reckoning is always the same. Twenty-eight people
appear in the enumeration, one being always a man in a long black cloak
and broad hat, and another a “short figure in dark cloak and hood”. On the
other hand, it is always noted that only twenty-six passengers appear at
meals, and that the man in the cloak is perhaps absent, and the short figure
is certainly absent.

On reaching England, it appears that Mr Wraxall landed at Harwich, and
that he resolved at once to put himself out of the reach of some person or
persons whom he never specifies, but whom he had evidently come to
regard as his pursuers. Accordingly he took a vehicle—it was a closed fly—
not trusting the railway and drove across country to the village of Belchamp
St Paul. It was about nine o’clock on a moonlight August night when he
neared the place. He was sitting forward, and looking out of the window at
the fields and thickets—there was little else to be seen—racing past him.
Suddenly he came to a cross-road. At the corner two figures were standing
motionless; both were in dark cloaks; the taller one wore a hat, the shorter a
hood. He had no time to see their faces, nor did they make any motion that
he could discern. Yet the horse shied violently and broke into a gallop, and
Mr Wraxall sank back into his seat in something like desperation. He had
seen them before.
Arrived at Belchamp St Paul, he was fortunate enough to find a decent
furnished lodging, and for the next twenty-four hours he lived,
comparatively speaking, in peace. His last notes were written on this day.
They are too disjointed and ejaculatory to be given here in full, but the
substance of them is clear enough. He is expecting a visit from his pursuers
—how or when he knows not—and his constant cry is “What has he done?”
and “Is there no hope?” Doctors, he knows, would call him mad, policemen
would laugh at him. The parson is away. What can he do but lock his door
and cry to God?

People still remembered last year at Belchamp St Paul how a strange
gentleman came one evening in August years back; and how the next
morning but one he was found dead, and there was an inquest; and the jury
that viewed the body fainted, seven of ’em did, and none of ’em wouldn’t
speak to what they see, and the verdict was visitation of God; and how the
people as kep’ the ’ouse moved out that same week, and went away from
that part. But they do not, I think, know that any glimmer of light has ever
been thrown, or could be thrown, on the mystery. It so happened that last
year the little house came into my hands as part of a legacy. It had stood
empty since 1863, and there seemed no prospect of letting it; so I had it
pulled down, and the papers of which I have given you an abstract were
found in a forgotten cupboard under the window in the best bedroom.

“OH, WHISTLE, AND I’LL COME TO YOU, MY
LAD”

“I suppose you will be getting away pretty soon, now Full Term is over,
Professor,” said a person not in the story to the Professor of Ontography,
soon after they had sat down next to each other at a feast in the hospitable
hall of St James’s College.
The Professor was young, neat, and precise in speech.
“Yes,” he said; “my friends have been making me take up golf this term,
and I mean to go to the East Coast—in point of fact to Burnstow—(I dare
say you know it) for a week or ten days, to improve my game. I hope to get
off tomorrow.”
“Oh, Parkins,” said his neighbour on the other side, “if you are going to
Burnstow, I wish you would look at the site of the Templars’ preceptory,
and let me know if you think it would be any good to have a dig there in the
summer.”
It was, as you might suppose, a person of antiquarian pursuits who said
this, but, since he merely appears in this prologue, there is no need to give
his entitlements.
“Certainly,” said Parkins, the Professor: “if you will describe to me
whereabouts the site is, I will do my best to give you an idea of the lie of
the land when I get back; or I could write to you about it, if you would tell
me where you are likely to be.”
“Don’t trouble to do that, thanks. It’s only that I’m thinking of taking my
family in that direction in the Long, and it occurred to me that, as very few
of the English preceptories have ever been properly planned, I might have
an opportunity of doing something useful on off-days.”
The Professor rather sniffed at the idea that planning out a preceptory
could be described as useful. His neighbour continued:

“The site—I doubt if there is anything showing above ground—must be
down quite close to the beach now. The sea has encroached tremendously,
as you know, all along that bit of coast. I should think, from the map, that it
must be about three-quarters of a mile from the Globe Inn, at the north end
of the town. Where are you going to stay?”
“Well, at the Globe Inn, as a matter of fact,” said Parkins; “I have
engaged a room there. I couldn’t get in anywhere else; most of the lodging-
houses are shut up in winter, it seems; and, as it is, they tell me that the only
room of any size I can have is really a double-bedded one, and that they
haven’t a corner in which to store the other bed, and so on. But I must have
a fairly large room, for I am taking some books down, and mean to do a bit
of work; and though I don’t quite fancy having an empty bed—not to speak
of two—in what I may call for the time being my study, I suppose I can
manage to rough it for the short time I shall be there.”
“Do you call having an extra bed in your room roughing it, Parkins?”
said a bluff person opposite. “Look here, I shall come down and occupy it
for a bit; it’ll be company for you.”
The Professor quivered, but managed to laugh in a courteous manner.
“By all means, Rogers; there’s nothing I should like better. But I’m afraid
you would find it rather dull; you don’t play golf, do you?”
“No, thank Heaven!” said rude Mr Rogers.
“Well, you see, when I’m not writing I shall most likely be out on the
links, and that, as I say, would be rather dull for you, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, I don’t know! There’s certain to be somebody I know in the place;
but, of course, if you don’t want me, speak the word, Parkins; I shan’t be
offended. Truth, as you always tell us, is never offensive.”
Parkins was, indeed, scrupulously polite and strictly truthful. It is to be
feared that Mr Rogers sometimes practised upon his knowledge of these
characteristics. In Parkins’s breast there was a conflict now raging, which
for a moment or two did not allow him to answer. That interval being over,
he said:
“Well, if you want the exact truth, Rogers, I was considering whether the
room I speak of would really be large enough to accommodate us both
comfortably; and also whether (mind, I shouldn’t have said this if you

hadn’t pressed me) you would not constitute something in the nature of a
hindrance to my work.”
Rogers laughed loudly.
“Well done, Parkins!” he said. “It’s all right. I promise not to interrupt
your work; don’t you disturb yourself about that. No, I won’t come if you
don’t want me; but I thought I should do so nicely to keep the ghosts off.”
Here he might have been seen to wink and to nudge his next neighbour.
Parkins might also have been seen to become pink. “I beg pardon, Parkins,”
Rogers continued; “I oughtn’t to have said that. I forgot you didn’t like
levity on these topics.”
“Well,” Parkins said, “as you have mentioned the matter, I freely own
that I do not like careless talk about what you call ghosts. A man in my
position,” he went on, raising his voice a little, “cannot, I find, be too
careful about appearing to sanction the current beliefs on such subjects. As
you know, Rogers, or as you ought to know; for I think I have never
concealed my views—”
“No, you certainly have not, old man,” put in Rogers sotto voce.
“—I hold that any semblance, any appearance of concession to the view
that such things might exist is equivalent to a renunciation of all that I hold
most sacred. But I’m afraid I have not succeeded in securing your
attention.”
“Your undivided attention, was what Dr Blimber actually said,”[4] Rogers
interrupted, with every appearance of an earnest desire for accuracy. “But I
beg your pardon, Parkins: I’m stopping you.”
[4] Mr Rogers was wrong, vide Dombey and Son, chapter xii.

“No, not at all,” said Parkins. “I don’t remember Blimber; perhaps he
was before my time. But I needn’t go on. I’m sure you know what I mean.”
“Yes, yes,” said Rogers, rather hastily—“just so. We’ll go into it fully at
Burnstow, or somewhere.”
In repeating the above dialogue I have tried to give the impression which
it made on me, that Parkins was something of an old woman—rather
henlike, perhaps, in his little ways; totally destitute, alas! of the sense of
humour, but at the same time dauntless and sincere in his convictions, and a

man deserving of the greatest respect. Whether or not the reader has
gathered so much, that was the character which Parkins had.

On the following day Parkins did, as he had hoped, succeed in getting
away from his college, and in arriving at Burnstow. He was made welcome
at the Globe Inn, was safely installed in the large double-bedded room of
which we have heard, and was able before retiring to rest to arrange his
materials for work in apple-pie order upon a commodious table which
occupied the outer end of the room, and was surrounded on three sides by
windows looking out seaward; that is to say, the central window looked
straight out to sea, and those on the left and right commanded prospects
along the shore to the north and south respectively. On the south you saw
the village of Burnstow. On the north no houses were to be seen, but only
the beach and the low cliff backing it. Immediately in front was a strip—not
considerable—of rough grass, dotted with old anchors, capstans, and so
forth; then a broad path; then the beach. Whatever may have been the
original distance between the Globe Inn and the sea, not more than sixty
yards now separated them.
The rest of the population of the inn was, of course, a golfing one, and
included few elements that call for a special description. The most
conspicuous figure was, perhaps, that of an ancien militaire, secretary of a
London club, and possessed of a voice of incredible strength, and of views
of a pronouncedly Protestant type. These were apt to find utterance after his
attendance upon the ministrations of the Vicar, an estimable man with
inclinations towards a picturesque ritual, which he gallantly kept down as
far as he could out of deference to East Anglian tradition.
Professor Parkins, one of whose principal characteristics was pluck, spent
the greater part of the day following his arrival at Burnstow in what he had
called improving his game, in company with this Colonel Wilson: and
during the afternoon—whether the process of improvement were to blame
or not, I am not sure—the Colonel’s demeanour assumed a colouring so
lurid that even Parkins jibbed at the thought of walking home with him
from the links. He determined, after a short and furtive look at that bristling
moustache and those incarnadined features, that it would be wiser to allow
the influences of tea and tobacco to do what they could with the Colonel
before the dinner-hour should render a meeting inevitable.

“I might walk home tonight along the beach,” he reflected—“yes, and
take a look—there will be light enough for that—at the ruins of which
Disney was talking. I don’t exactly know where they are, by the way; but I
expect I can hardly help stumbling on them.”
This he accomplished, I may say, in the most literal sense, for in picking
his way from the links to the shingle beach his foot caught, partly in a
gorse-root and partly in a biggish stone, and over he went. When he got up
and surveyed his surroundings, he found himself in a patch of somewhat
broken ground covered with small depressions and mounds. These latter,
when he came to examine them, proved to be simply masses of flints
embedded in mortar and grown over with turf. He must, he quite rightly
concluded, be on the site of the preceptory he had promised to look at. It
seemed not unlikely to reward the spade of the explorer; enough of the
foundations was probably left at no great depth to throw a good deal of light
on the general plan. He remembered vaguely that the Templars, to whom
this site had belonged, were in the habit of building round churches, and he
thought a particular series of the humps or mounds near him did appear to
be arranged in something of a circular form. Few people can resist the
temptation to try a little amateur research in a department quite outside their
own, if only for the satisfaction of showing how successful they would have
been had they only taken it up seriously. Our Professor, however, if he felt
something of this mean desire, was also truly anxious to oblige Mr Disney.
So he paced with care the circular area he had noticed, and wrote down its
rough dimensions in his pocket-book. Then he proceeded to examine an
oblong eminence which lay east of the centre of the circle, and seemed to
his thinking likely to be the base of a platform or altar. At one end of it, the
northern, a patch of the turf was gone—removed by some boy or other
creature feraæ naturæ. It might, he thought, be as well to probe the soil here
for evidences of masonry, and he took out his knife and began scraping
away the earth. And now followed another little discovery: a portion of soil
fell inward as he scraped, and disclosed a small cavity. He lighted one
match after another to help him to see of what nature the hole was, but the
wind was too strong for them all. By tapping and scratching the sides with
his knife, however, he was able to make out that it must be an artificial hole
in masonry. It was rectangular, and the sides, top, and bottom, if not
actually plastered, were smooth and regular. Of course it was empty. No! As
he withdrew the knife he heard a metallic clink, and when he introduced his

hand it met with a cylindrical object lying on the floor of the hole. Naturally
enough, he picked it up, and when he brought it into the light, now fast
fading, he could see that it, too, was of man’s making—a metal tube about
four inches long, and evidently of some considerable age.
By the time Parkins had made sure that there was nothing else in this odd
receptacle, it was too late and too dark for him to think of undertaking any
further search. What he had done had proved so unexpectedly interesting
that he determined to sacrifice a little more of the daylight on the morrow to
archaeology. The object which he now had safe in his pocket was bound to
be of some slight value at least, he felt sure.
Bleak and solemn was the view on which he took a last look before
starting homeward. A faint yellow light in the west showed the links, on
which a few figures moving towards the club-house were still visible, the
squat martello tower, the lights of Aldsey village, the pale ribbon of sands
intersected at intervals by black wooden groynings, the dim and murmuring
sea. The wind was bitter from the north, but was at his back when he set out
for the Globe. He quickly rattled and clashed through the shingle and
gained the sand, upon which, but for the groynings which had to be got over
every few yards, the going was both good and quiet. One last look behind,
to measure the distance he had made since leaving the ruined Templars’
church, showed him a prospect of company on his walk, in the shape of a
rather indistinct personage, who seemed to be making great efforts to catch
up with him, but made little, if any, progress. I mean that there was an
appearance of running about his movements, but that the distance between
him and Parkins did not seem materially to lessen. So, at least, Parkins
thought, and decided that he almost certainly did not know him, and that it
would be absurd to wait until he came up. For all that, company, he began
to think, would really be very welcome on that lonely shore, if only you
could choose your companion. In his unenlightened days he had read of
meetings in such places which even now would hardly bear thinking of. He
went on thinking of them, however, until he reached home, and particularly
of one which catches most people’s fancy at some time of their childhood.
“Now I saw in my dream that Christian had gone but a very little way when
he saw a foul fiend coming over the field to meet him.” “What should I do
now,” he thought, “if I looked back and caught sight of a black figure
sharply defined against the yellow sky, and saw that it had horns and
wings? I wonder whether I should stand or run for it. Luckily, the

gentleman behind is not of that kind, and he seems to be about as far off
now as when I saw him first. Well, at this rate, he won’t get his dinner as
soon as I shall; and, dear me! it’s within a quarter of an hour of the time
now. I must run!”
Parkins had, in fact, very little time for dressing. When he met the
Colonel at dinner, Peace—or as much of her as that gentleman could
manage—reigned once more in the military bosom; nor was she put to
flight in the hours of bridge that followed dinner, for Parkins was a more
than respectable player. When, therefore, he retired towards twelve o’clock,
he felt that he had spent his evening in quite a satisfactory way, and that,
even for so long as a fortnight or three weeks, life at the Globe would be
supportable under similar conditions—“especially,” thought he, “if I go on
improving my game.”
As he went along the passages he met the boots of the Globe, who
stopped and said:
“Beg your pardon, sir, but as I was a-brushing your coat just now there
was somethink fell out of the pocket. I put it on your chest of drawers, sir,
in your room, sir—a piece of a pipe or somethink of that, sir. Thank you, sir.
You’ll find it on your chest of drawers, sir—yes, sir. Good night, sir.”
The speech served to remind Parkins of his little discovery of that
afternoon. It was with some considerable curiosity that he turned it over by
the light of his candles. It was of bronze, he now saw, and was shaped very
much after the manner of the modern dog-whistle; in fact it was—yes,
certainly it was—actually no more nor less than a whistle. He put it to his
lips, but it was quite full of a fine, caked-up sand or earth, which would not
yield to knocking, but must be loosened with a knife. Tidy as ever in his
habits, Parkins cleared out the earth on to a piece of paper, and took the
latter to the window to empty it out. The night was clear and bright, as he
saw when he had opened the casement, and he stopped for an instant to look
at the sea and note a belated wanderer stationed on the shore in front of the
inn. Then he shut the window, a little surprised at the late hours people kept
at Burnstow, and took his whistle to the light again. Why, surely there were
marks on it, and not merely marks, but letters! A very little rubbing
rendered the deeply-cut inscription quite legible, but the Professor had to
confess, after some earnest thought, that the meaning of it was as obscure to

him as the writing on the wall to Belshazzar. There were legends both on
the front and on the back of the whistle. The one read thus:

FLA FUR BIS FLE
The other:

QUIS EST ISTE QUI VENIT
“I ought to be able to make it out,” he thought; “but I suppose I am a
little rusty in my Latin. When I come to think of it, I don’t believe I even
know the word for a whistle. The long one does seem simple enough. It
ought to mean, ‘Who is this who is coming?’ Well, the best way to find out
is evidently to whistle for him.”
He blew tentatively and stopped suddenly, startled and yet pleased at the
note he had elicited. It had a quality of infinite distance in it, and, soft as it
was, he somehow felt it must be audible for miles round. It was a sound,
too, that seemed to have the power (which many scents possess) of forming
pictures in the brain. He saw quite clearly for a moment a vision of a wide,
dark expanse at night, with a fresh wind blowing, and in the midst a lonely
figure—how employed, he could not tell. Perhaps he would have seen more
had not the picture been broken by the sudden surge of a gust of wind
against his casement, so sudden that it made him look up, just in time to see
the white glint of a seabird’s wing somewhere outside the dark panes.
The sound of the whistle had so fascinated him that he could not help
trying it once more, this time more boldly. The note was little, if at all,
louder than before, and repetition broke the illusion—no picture followed,
as he had half hoped it might. ‘But what is this? Goodness! what force the
wind can get up in a few minutes! What a tremendous gust! There! I knew
that window-fastening was no use! Ah! I thought so—both candles out. It is
enough to tear the room to pieces.’
The first thing was to get the window shut. While you might count
twenty Parkins was struggling with the small casement, and felt almost as if
he were pushing back a sturdy burglar, so strong was the pressure. It
slackened all at once, and the window banged to and latched itself. Now to
relight the candles and see what damage, if any, had been done. No, nothing
seemed amiss; no glass even was broken in the casement. But the noise had

evidently roused at least one member of the household: the Colonel was to
be heard stumping in his stockinged feet on the floor above, and growling.
Quickly as it had risen, the wind did not fall at once. On it went, moaning
and rushing past the house, at times rising to a cry so desolate that, as
Parkins disinterestedly said, it might have made fanciful people feel quite
uncomfortable; even the unimaginative, he thought after a quarter of an
hour, might be happier without it.
Whether it was the wind, or the excitement of golf, or of the researches in
the preceptory that kept Parkins awake, he was not sure. Awake he
remained, in any case, long enough to fancy (as I am afraid I often do
myself under such conditions) that he was the victim of all manner of fatal
disorders: he would lie counting the beats of his heart, convinced that it was
going to stop work every moment, and would entertain grave suspicions of
his lungs, brain, liver, etc.—suspicions which he was sure would be
dispelled by the return of daylight, but which until then refused to be put
aside. He found a little vicarious comfort in the idea that someone else was
in the same boat. A near neighbour (in the darkness it was not easy to tell
his direction) was tossing and rustling in his bed, too.
The next stage was that Parkins shut his eyes and determined to give
sleep every chance. Here again over-excitement asserted itself in another
form—that of making pictures. Experto crede, pictures do come to the
closed eyes of one trying to sleep, and are often so little to his taste that he
must open his eyes and disperse them.
Parkins’s experience on this occasion was a very distressing one. He
found that the picture which presented itself to him was continuous. When
he opened his eyes, of course, it went; but when he shut them once more it
framed itself afresh, and acted itself out again, neither quicker nor slower
than before. What he saw was this:
A long stretch of shore—shingle edged by sand, and intersected at short
intervals with black groynes running down to the water—a scene, in fact, so
like that of his afternoon’s walk that, in the absence of any landmark, it
could not be distinguished therefrom. The light was obscure, conveying an
impression of gathering storm, late winter evening, and slight cold rain. On
this bleak stage at first no actor was visible. Then, in the distance, a bobbing
black object appeared; a moment more, and it was a man running, jumping,
clambering over the groynes, and every few seconds looking eagerly back.

The nearer he came the more obvious it was that he was not only anxious,
but even terribly frightened, though his face was not to be distinguished. He
was, moreover, almost at the end of his strength. On he came; each
successive obstacle seemed to cause him more difficulty than the last. “Will
he get over this next one?” thought Parkins; “it seems a little higher than the
others.” Yes; half climbing, half throwing himself, he did get over, and fell
all in a heap on the other side (the side nearest to the spectator). There, as if
really unable to get up again, he remained crouching under the groyne,
looking up in an attitude of painful anxiety.
So far no cause whatever for the fear of the runner had been shown; but
now there began to be seen, far up the shore, a little flicker of something
light-coloured moving to and fro with great swiftness and irregularity.
Rapidly growing larger, it, too, declared itself as a figure in pale, fluttering
draperies, ill-defined. There was something about its motion which made
Parkins very unwilling to see it at close quarters. It would stop, raise arms,
bow itself towards the sand, then run stooping across the beach to the water-
edge and back again; and then, rising upright, once more continue its course
forward at a speed that was startling and terrifying. The moment came when
the pursuer was hovering about from left to right only a few yards beyond
the groyne where the runner lay in hiding. After two or three ineffectual
castings hither and thither it came to a stop, stood upright, with arms raised
high, and then darted straight forward towards the groyne.
It was at this point that Parkins always failed in his resolution to keep his
eyes shut. With many misgivings as to incipient failure of eyesight,
overworked brain, excessive smoking, and so on, he finally resigned
himself to light his candle, get out a book, and pass the night waking, rather
than be tormented by this persistent panorama, which he saw clearly
enough could only be a morbid reflection of his walk and his thoughts on
that very day.
The scraping of match on box and the glare of light must have startled
some creatures of the night—rats or what not—which he heard scurry
across the floor from the side of his bed with much rustling. Dear, dear! the
match is out! Fool that it is! But the second one burnt better, and a candle
and book were duly procured, over which Parkins pored till sleep of a
wholesome kind came upon him, and that in no long space. For about the
first time in his orderly and prudent life he forgot to blow out the candle,

and when he was called next morning at eight there was still a flicker in the
socket and a sad mess of guttered grease on the top of the little table.
After breakfast he was in his room, putting the finishing touches to his
golfing costume—fortune had again allotted the Colonel to him for a
partner—when one of the maids came in.
“Oh, if you please,” she said, “would you like any extra blankets on your
bed, sir?”
“Ah! thank you,” said Parkins. “Yes, I think I should like one. It seems
likely to turn rather colder.”
In a very short time the maid was back with the blanket.
“Which bed should I put it on, sir?” she asked.
“What? Why, that one—the one I slept in last night,” he said, pointing to
it.
“Oh yes! I beg your pardon, sir, but you seemed to have tried both of
“em; leastways, we had to make ’em both up this morning.”
“Really? How very absurd!” said Parkins. “I certainly never touched the
other, except to lay some things on it. Did it actually seem to have been
slept in?”
“Oh yes, sir!” said the maid. “Why, all the things was crumpled and
throwed about all ways, if you’ll excuse me, sir—quite as if anyone ’adn’t
passed but a very poor night, sir.”
“Dear me,” said Parkins. “Well, I may have disordered it more than I
thought when I unpacked my things. I’m very sorry to have given you the
extra trouble, I’m sure. I expect a friend of mine soon, by the way—a
gentleman from Cambridge—to come and occupy it for a night or two. That
will be all right, I suppose, won’t it?”
“Oh yes, to be sure, sir. Thank you, sir. It’s no trouble, I’m sure,” said the
maid, and departed to giggle with her colleagues.
Parkins set forth, with a stern determination to improve his game.
I am glad to be able to report that he succeeded so far in this enterprise
that the Colonel, who had been rather repining at the prospect of a second
day’s play in his company, became quite chatty as the morning advanced;
and his voice boomed out over the flats, as certain also of our own minor
poets have said, “like some great bourdon in a minster tower”.

“Extraordinary wind, that, we had last night,” he said. “In my old home
we should have said someone had been whistling for it.”
“Should you, indeed!” said Parkins. “Is there a superstition of that kind
still current in your part of the country?”
“I don’t know about superstition,” said the Colonel. “They believe in it
all over Denmark and Norway, as well as on the Yorkshire coast; and my
experience is, mind you, that there’s generally something at the bottom of
what these country-folk hold to, and have held to for generations. But it’s
your drive” (or whatever it might have been: the golfing reader will have to
imagine appropriate digressions at the proper intervals).
When conversation was resumed, Parkins said, with a slight hesitancy:
“A propos of what you were saying just now, Colonel, I think I ought to
tell you that my own views on such subjects are very strong. I am, in fact, a
convinced disbeliever in what is called the ‘supernatural’.”
“What!” said the Colonel, “do you mean to tell me you don’t believe in
second-sight, or ghosts, or anything of that kind?”
“In nothing whatever of that kind,” returned Parkins firmly.
“Well,” said the Colonel, “but it appears to me at that rate, sir, that you
must be little better than a Sadducee.”
Parkins was on the point of answering that, in his opinion, the Sadducees
were the most sensible persons he had ever read of in the Old Testament;
but, feeling some doubt as to whether much mention of them was to be
found in that work, he preferred to laugh the accusation off.
“Perhaps I am,” he said; “but—Here, give me my cleek, boy!—Excuse
me one moment, Colonel.” A short interval. “Now, as to whistling for the
wind, let me give you my theory about it. The laws which govern winds are
really not at all perfectly known—to fisherfolk and such, of course, not
known at all. A man or woman of eccentric habits, perhaps, or a stranger, is
seen repeatedly on the beach at some unusual hour, and is heard whistling.
Soon afterwards a violent wind rises; a man who could read the sky
perfectly or who possessed a barometer could have foretold that it would.
The simple people of a fishing-village have no barometers, and only a few
rough rules for prophesying weather. What more natural than that the
eccentric personage I postulated should be regarded as having raised the
wind, or that he or she should clutch eagerly at the reputation of being able

to do so? Now, take last night’s wind: as it happens, I myself was whistling.
I blew a whistle twice, and the wind seemed to come absolutely in answer
to my call. If anyone had seen me—”
The audience had been a little restive under this harangue, and Parkins
had, I fear, fallen somewhat into the tone of a lecturer; but at the last
sentence the Colonel stopped.
“Whistling, were you?” he said. “And what sort of whistle did you use?
Play this stroke first.” Interval.
“About that whistle you were asking, Colonel. It’s rather a curious one. I
have it in my—No; I see I’ve left it in my room. As a matter of fact, I found
it yesterday.”
And then Parkins narrated the manner of his discovery of the whistle,
upon hearing which the Colonel grunted, and opined that, in Parkins’s
place, he should himself be careful about using a thing that had belonged to
a set of Papists, of whom, speaking generally, it might be affirmed that you
never knew what they might not have been up to. From this topic he
diverged to the enormities of the Vicar, who had given notice on the
previous Sunday that Friday would be the Feast of St Thomas the Apostle,
and that there would be service at eleven o’clock in the church. This and
other similar proceedings constituted in the Colonel’s view a strong
presumption that the Vicar was a concealed Papist, if not a Jesuit; and
Parkins, who could not very readily follow the Colonel in this region, did
not disagree with him. In fact, they got on so well together in the morning
that there was no talk on either side of their separating after lunch.
Both continued to play well during the afternoon, or, at least, well
enough to make them forget everything else until the light began to fail
them. Not until then did Parkins remember that he had meant to do some
more investigating at the preceptory; but it was of no great importance, he
reflected. One day was as good as another; he might as well go home with
the Colonel.
As they turned the corner of the house, the Colonel was almost knocked
down by a boy who rushed into him at the very top of his speed, and then,
instead of running away, remained hanging on to him and panting. The first
words of the warrior were naturally those of reproof and objurgation, but he
very quickly discerned that the boy was almost speechless with fright.
Inquiries were useless at first. When the boy got his breath he began to

howl, and still clung to the Colonel’s legs. He was at last detached, but
continued to howl.
“What in the world is the matter with you? What have you been up to?
What have you seen?” said the two men.
“Ow, I seen it wive at me out of the winder,” wailed the boy, “and I don’t
like it.”
“What window?” said the irritated Colonel. “Come, pull yourself
together, my boy.”
“The front winder it was, at the ’otel,” said the boy.
At this point Parkins was in favour of sending the boy home, but the
Colonel refused; he wanted to get to the bottom of it, he said; it was most
dangerous to give a boy such a fright as this one had had, and if it turned
out that people had been playing jokes, they should suffer for it in some
way. And by a series of questions he made out this story: The boy had been
playing about on the grass in front of the Globe with some others; then they
had gone home to their teas, and he was just going, when he happened to
look up at the front winder and see it a-wiving at him. It seemed to be a
figure of some sort, in white as far as he knew—couldn’t see its face; but it
wived at him, and it warn’t a right thing—not to say not a right person. Was
there a light in the room? No, he didn’t think to look if there was a light.
Which was the window? Was it the top one or the second one? The seckind
one it was—the big winder what got two little uns at the sides.
“Very well, my boy,” said the Colonel, after a few more questions. “You
run away home now. I expect it was some person trying to give you a start.
Another time, like a brave English boy, you just throw a stone—well, no,
not that exactly, but you go and speak to the waiter, or to Mr Simpson, the
landlord, and—yes—and say that I advised you to do so.”
The boy’s face expressed some of the doubt he felt as to the likelihood of
Mr Simpson’s lending a favourable ear to his complaint, but the Colonel did
not appear to perceive this, and went on:
“And here’s a sixpence—no, I see it’s a shilling—and you be off home,
and don’t think any more about it.”
The youth hurried off with agitated thanks, and the Colonel and Parkins
went round to the front of the Globe and reconnoitred. There was only one
window answering to the description they had been hearing.

“Well, that’s curious,” said Parkins; “it’s evidently my window the lad
was talking about. Will you come up for a moment, Colonel Wilson? We
ought to be able to see if anyone has been taking liberties in my room.”
They were soon in the passage, and Parkins made as if to open the door.
Then he stopped and felt in his pockets.
“This is more serious than I thought,” was his next remark. “I remember
now that before I started this morning I locked the door. It is locked now,
and, what is more, here is the key.” And he held it up. “Now,” he went on,
“if the servants are in the habit of going into one’s room during the day
when one is away, I can only say that—well, that I don’t approve of it at
all.” Conscious of a somewhat weak climax, he busied himself in opening
the door (which was indeed locked) and in lighting candles. “No,” he said,
“nothing seems disturbed.”
“Except your bed,” put in the Colonel.
“Excuse me, that isn’t my bed,” said Parkins. “I don’t use that one. But it
does look as if someone had been playing tricks with it.”
It certainly did: the clothes were bundled up and twisted together in a
most tortuous confusion. Parkins pondered.
“That must be it,” he said at last: “I disordered the clothes last night in
unpacking, and they haven’t made it since. Perhaps they came in to make it,
and that boy saw them through the window; and then they were called away
and locked the door after them. Yes, I think that must be it.”
“Well, ring and ask,” said the Colonel, and this appealed to Parkins as
practical.
The maid appeared, and, to make a long story short, deposed that she had
made the bed in the morning when the gentleman was in the room, and
hadn’t been there since. No, she hadn’t no other key. Mr Simpson he kep’
the keys; he’d be able to tell the gentleman if anyone had been up.
This was a puzzle. Investigation showed that nothing of value had been
taken, and Parkins remembered the disposition of the small objects on
tables and so forth well enough to be pretty sure that no pranks had been
played with them. Mr and Mrs Simpson furthermore agreed that neither of
them had given the duplicate key of the room to any person whatever
during the day. Nor could Parkins, fair-minded man as he was, detect
anything in the demeanour of master, mistress, or maid that indicated guilt.

He was much more inclined to think that the boy had been imposing on the
Colonel.
The latter was unwontedly silent and pensive at dinner and throughout
the evening. When he bade goodnight to Parkins, he murmured in a gruff
undertone:
“You know where I am if you want me during the night.”
“Why, yes, thank you, Colonel Wilson, I think I do; but there isn’t much
prospect of my disturbing you, I hope. By the way,” he added, “did I show
you that old whistle I spoke of? I think not. Well, here it is.”
The Colonel turned it over gingerly in the light of the candle.
“Can you make anything of the inscription?” asked Parkins, as he took it
back.
“No, not in this light. What do you mean to do with it?”
“Oh, well, when I get back to Cambridge I shall submit it to some of the
archaeologists there, and see what they think of it; and very likely, if they
consider it worth having, I may present it to one of the museums.”
“’M!” said the Colonel. “Well, you may be right. All I know is that, if it
were mine, I should chuck it straight into the sea. It’s no use talking, I’m
well aware, but I expect that with you it’s a case of live and learn. I hope so,
I’m sure, and I wish you a good night.”
He turned away, leaving Parkins in act to speak at the bottom of the stair,
and soon each was in his own bedroom.
By some unfortunate accident, there were neither blinds nor curtains to
the windows of the Professor’s room. The previous night he had thought
little of this, but tonight there seemed every prospect of a bright moon
rising to shine directly on his bed, and probably wake him later on. When
he noticed this he was a good deal annoyed, but, with an ingenuity which I
can only envy, he succeeded in rigging up, with the help of a railway-rug,
some safety-pins, and a stick and umbrella, a screen which, if it only held
together, would completely keep the moonlight off his bed. And shortly
afterwards he was comfortably in that bed. When he had read a somewhat
solid work long enough to produce a decided wish for sleep, he cast a
drowsy glance round the room, blew out the candle, and fell back upon the
pillow.

He must have slept soundly for an hour or more, when a sudden clatter
shook him up in a most unwelcome manner. In a moment he realized what
had happened: his carefully-constructed screen had given way, and a very
bright frosty moon was shining directly on his face. This was highly
annoying. Could he possibly get up and reconstruct the screen? or could he
manage to sleep if he did not?
For some minutes he lay and pondered over the possibilities; then he
turned over sharply, and with his eyes open lay breathlessly listening. There
had been a movement, he was sure, in the empty bed on the opposite side of
the room. Tomorrow he would have it moved, for there must be rats or
something playing about in it. It was quiet now. No! the commotion began
again. There was a rustling and shaking: surely more than any rat could
cause.
I can figure to myself something of the Professor’s bewilderment and
horror, for I have in a dream thirty years back seen the same thing happen;
but the reader will hardly, perhaps, imagine how dreadful it was to him to
see a figure suddenly sit up in what he had known was an empty bed. He
was out of his own bed in one bound, and made a dash towards the window,
where lay his only weapon, the stick with which he had propped his screen.
This was, as it turned out, the worst thing he could have done, because the
personage in the empty bed, with a sudden smooth motion, slipped from the
bed and took up a position, with outspread arms, between the two beds, and
in front of the door. Parkins watched it in a horrid perplexity. Somehow, the
idea of getting past it and escaping through the door was intolerable to him;
he could not have borne—he didn’t know why—to touch it; and as for its
touching him, he would sooner dash himself through the window than have
that happen. It stood for the moment in a band of dark shadow, and he had
not seen what its face was like. Now it began to move, in a stooping
posture, and all at once the spectator realized, with some horror and some
relief, that it must be blind, for it seemed to feel about it with its muffled
arms in a groping and random fashion. Turning half away from him, it
became suddenly conscious of the bed he had just left, and darted towards
it, and bent and felt over the pillows in a way which made Parkins shudder
as he had never in his life thought it possible. In a very few moments it
seemed to know that the bed was empty, and then, moving forward into the
area of light and facing the window, it showed for the first time what
manner of thing it was.

Parkins, who very much dislikes being questioned about it, did once
describe something of it in my hearing, and I gathered that what he chiefly
remembers about it is a horrible, an intensely horrible, face of crumpled
linen. What expression he read upon it he could not or would not tell, but
that the fear of it went nigh to maddening him is certain.
But he was not at leisure to watch it for long. With formidable quickness
it moved into the middle of the room, and, as it groped and waved, one
corner of its draperies swept across Parkins’s face. He could not, though he
knew how perilous a sound was—he could not keep back a cry of disgust,
and this gave the searcher an instant clue. It leapt towards him upon the
instant, and the next moment he was half-way through the window
backwards, uttering cry upon cry at the utmost pitch of his voice, and the
linen face was thrust close into his own. At this, almost the last possible
second, deliverance came, as you will have guessed: the Colonel burst the
door open, and was just in time to see the dreadful group at the window.
When he reached the figures only one was left. Parkins sank forward into
the room in a faint, and before him on the floor lay a tumbled heap of bed-
clothes.
Colonel Wilson asked no questions, but busied himself in keeping
everyone else out of the room and in getting Parkins back to his bed; and
himself, wrapped in a rug, occupied the other bed, for the rest of the night.
Early on the next day Rogers arrived, more welcome than he would have
been a day before, and the three of them held a very long consultation in the
Professor’s room. At the end of it the Colonel left the hotel door carrying a
small object between his finger and thumb, which he cast as far into the sea
as a very brawny arm could send it. Later on the smoke of a burning
ascended from the back premises of the Globe.
Exactly what explanation was patched up for the staff and visitors at the
hotel I must confess I do not recollect. The Professor was somehow cleared
of the ready suspicion of delirium tremens, and the hotel of the reputation
of a troubled house.
There is not much question as to what would have happened to Parkins if
the Colonel had not intervened when he did. He would either have fallen
out of the window or else lost his wits. But it is not so evident what more
the creature that came in answer to the whistle could have done than
frighten. There seemed to be absolutely nothing material about it save the

bedclothes of which it had made itself a body. The Colonel, who
remembered a not very dissimilar occurrence in India, was of the opinion
that if Parkins had closed with it it could really have done very little, and
that its one power was that of frightening. The whole thing, he said, served
to confirm his opinion of the Church of Rome.
There is really nothing more to tell, but, as you may imagine, the
Professor’s views on certain points are less clear cut than they used to be.
His nerves, too, have suffered: he cannot even now see a surplice hanging
on a door quite unmoved, and the spectacle of a scarecrow in a field late on
a winter afternoon has cost him more than one sleepless night.

THE TREASURE OF ABBOT THOMAS

I
Verum usque in præsentem diem multa garriunt inter se Canonici de abscondito
quodam istius Abbatis Thomæ thesauro, quem sæpe, quanquam adhuc incassum,
quæsiverunt Steinfeldenses. Ipsum enim Thomam adhuc florida in ætate existentem
ingentem auri massam circa monasterium defodisse perhibent; de quo multoties
interrogatus ubi esset, cum risu respondere solitus erat: “Job, Johannes, et Zacharias
vel vobis vel posteris indicabunt”; idemque aliquando adiicere se inventuris minime
invisurum. Inter alia huius Abbatis opera, hoc memoria præcipue dignum iudico
quod fenestram magnam in orientali parte alæ australis in ecclesia sua imaginibus
optime in vitro depictis impleverit: id quod et ipsius effigies et insignia ibidem
posita demonstrant. Domum quoque Abbatialem fere totam restauravit: puteo in
atrio ipsius effosso et lapidibus marmoreis pulchre cælatis exornato. Decessit
autem, morte aliquantulum subitanea perculsus, ætatis suæ anno lxxiido,
incarnationis vero Dominiæ mdxxixo.
“I suppose I shall have to translate this,” said the antiquary to himself, as he
finished copying the above lines from that rather rare and exceedingly diffuse book,
the Sertum Steinfeldense Norbertinum.[5] “Well, it may as well be done first as last,”
and accordingly the following rendering was very quickly produced:
[5] An account of the Premonstratensian abbey of Steinfeld, in the Eiffel, with lives of
the Abbots, published at Cologne in 1712 by Christian Albert Erhard, a resident in the
district. The epithet Norbertinum is due to the fact that St Norbert was founder of the
Premonstratensian Order.

Up to the present day there is much gossip among the Canons about a certain
hidden treasure of this Abbot Thomas, for which those of Steinfeld have often made
search, though hitherto in vain. The story is that Thomas, while yet in the vigour of
life, concealed a very large quantity of gold somewhere in the monastery. He was
often asked where it was, and always answered, with a laugh: “Job, John, and
Zechariah will tell either you or your successors.” He sometimes added that he
should feel no grudge against those who might find it. Among other works carried
out by this Abbot I may specially mention his filling the great window at the east
end of the south aisle of the church with figures admirably painted on glass, as his

effigy and arms in the window attest. He also restored almost the whole of the
Abbot’s lodging, and dug a well in the court of it, which he adorned with beautiful
carvings in marble. He died rather suddenly in the seventy-second year of his age,
A.D. 1529.
The object which the antiquary had before him at the moment was that of tracing
the whereabouts of the painted windows of the Abbey Church of Steinfeld. Shortly
after the Revolution, a very large quantity of painted glass made its way from the
dissolved abbeys of Germany and Belgium to this country, and may now be seen
adorning various of our parish churches, cathedrals, and private chapels. Steinfeld
Abbey was among the most considerable of these involuntary contributors to our
artistic possessions (I am quoting the somewhat ponderous preamble of the book
which the antiquary wrote), and the greater part of the glass from that institution
can be identified without much difficulty by the help, either of the numerous
inscriptions in which the place is mentioned, or of the subjects of the windows, in
which several well-defined cycles or narratives were represented.
The passage with which I began my story had set the antiquary on the track of
another identification. In a private chapel—no matter where—he had seen three
large figures, each occupying a whole light in a window, and evidently the work of
one artist. Their style made it plain that that artist had been a German of the
sixteenth century; but hitherto the more exact localizing of them had been a puzzle.
They represented—will you be surprised to hear it?—JOB PATRIARCHA, JOHANNES
EVANGELISTA, ZACHARIAS PROPHETA, and each of them held a book or scroll,
inscribed with a sentence from his writings. These, as a matter of course, the
antiquary had noted, and had been struck by the curious way in which they differed
from any text of the Vulgate that he had been able to examine. Thus the scroll in
Job’s hand was inscribed: Auro est locus in quo absconditur (for conflatur);[6] on
the book of John was: Habent in vestimentis suis scripturam quam nemo novit[7]
(for in vestimento scriptum, the following words being taken from another verse);
and Zacharias had: Super lapidem unum septem oculi sunt[8] (which alone of the
three presents an unaltered text).
[6] There is a place for gold where it is hidden.

[7] They have on their raiment a writing which no man knoweth.

[8] Upon one stone are seven eyes.

A sad perplexity it had been to our investigator to think why these three
personages should have been placed together in one window. There was no bond of
connexion between them, either historic, symbolic, or doctrinal, and he could only
suppose that they must have formed part of a very large series of Prophets and
Apostles, which might have filled, say, all the clerestory windows of some
capacious church. But the passage from the Sertum had altered the situation by

showing that the names of the actual personages represented in the glass now in
Lord D——’s chapel had been constantly on the lips of Abbot Thomas von
Eschenhausen of Steinfeld, and that this Abbot had put up a painted window,
probably about the year 1520, in the south aisle of his abbey church. It was no very
wild conjecture that the three figures might have formed part of Abbot Thomas’s
offering; it was one which, moreover, could probably be confirmed or set aside by
another careful examination of the glass. And, as Mr. Somerton was a man of
leisure, he set out on pilgrimage to the private chapel with very little delay. His
conjecture was confirmed to the full. Not only did the style and technique of the
glass suit perfectly with the date and place required, but in another window of the
chapel he found some glass, known to have been bought along with the figures,
which contained the arms of Abbot Thomas von Eschenhausen.
At intervals during his researches Mr. Somerton had been haunted by the
recollection of the gossip about the hidden treasure, and, as he thought the matter
over, it became more and more obvious to him that if the Abbot meant anything by
the enigmatical answer which he gave to his questioners, he must have meant that
the secret was to be found somewhere in the window he had placed in the abbey
church. It was undeniable, furthermore, that the first of the curiously-selected texts
on the scrolls in the window might be taken to have a reference to hidden treasure.
Every feature, therefore, or mark which could possibly assist in elucidating the
riddle which, he felt sure, the Abbot had set to posterity he noted with scrupulous
care, and, returning to his Berkshire manor-house, consumed many a pint of the
midnight oil over his tracings and sketches. After two or three weeks, a day came
when Mr Somerton announced to his man that he must pack his own and his
master’s things for a short journey abroad, whither for the moment we will not
follow him.

II
Mr Gregory, the Rector of Parsbury, had strolled out before breakfast, it being a
fine autumn morning, as far as the gate of his carriage-drive, with intent to meet the
postman and sniff the cool air. Nor was he disappointed of either purpose. Before
he had had time to answer more than ten or eleven of the miscellaneous questions
propounded to him in the lightness of their hearts by his young offspring, who had
accompanied him, the postman was seen approaching; and among the morning’s
budget was one letter bearing a foreign postmark and stamp (which became at once
the objects of an eager competition among the youthful Gregorys), and was
addressed in an uneducated, but plainly an English hand.

When the Rector opened it, and turned to the signature, he realized that it came
from the confidential valet of his friend and squire, Mr. Somerton. Thus it ran:

HONOURED SIR,
Has I am in a great anxiety about Master I write at is Wish to
beg you Sir if you could be so good as Step over. Master Has add a
Nastey Shock and keeps His Bedd. I never Have known Him like
this but No wonder and Nothing will serve but you Sir. Master
says would I mintion the Short Way Here is Drive to Cobblince
and take a Trap. Hopeing I Have maid all Plain, but am much
Confused in Myself what with Anxiatey and Weakfulness at Night.
If I might be so Bold Sir it will be a Pleasure to see a Honnest
Brish Face among all These Forig ones.

I am Sir
Your obedt Servt
William Brown.

P.S.—The Village for Town I will not Turm. It is name Steenfeld.

The reader must be left to picture to himself in detail the surprise, confusion, and
hurry of preparation into which the receipt of such a letter would be likely to plunge
a quiet Berkshire parsonage in the year of grace 1859. It is enough for me to say
that a train to town was caught in the course of the day, and that Mr Gregory was
able to secure a cabin in the Antwerp boat and a place in the Coblentz train. Nor
was it difficult to manage the transit from that centre to Steinfeld.
I labour under a grave disadvantage as narrator of this story in that I have never
visited Steinfeld myself, and that neither of the principal actors in the episode (from
whom I derive my information) was able to give me anything but a vague and
rather dismal idea of its appearance. I gather that it is a small place, with a large
church despoiled of its ancient fittings; a number of rather ruinous great buildings,
mostly of the seventeenth century, surround this church; for the abbey, in common
with most of those on the Continent, was rebuilt in a luxurious fashion by its
inhabitants at that period. It has not seemed to me worth while to lavish money on a
visit to the place, for though it is probably far more attractive than either Mr
Somerton or Mr Gregory thought it, there is evidently little, if anything, of first-rate
interest to be seen—except, perhaps, one thing, which I should not care to see.
The inn where the English gentleman and his servant were lodged is, or was, the
only “possible” one in the village. Mr Gregory was taken to it at once by his driver,
and found Mr Brown waiting at the door. Mr Brown, a model when in his Berkshire
home of the impassive whiskered race who are known as confidential valets, was

now egregiously out of his element, in a light tweed suit, anxious, almost irritable,
and plainly anything but master of the situation. His relief at the sight of the
“honest British face” of his Rector was unmeasured, but words to describe it were
denied him. He could only say:
“Well, I ham pleased, I’m sure, sir, to see you. And so I’m sure, sir, will master.”
“How is your master, Brown?” Mr Gregory eagerly put in.
“I think he’s better, sir, thank you; but he’s had a dreadful time of it. I ’ope he’s
gettin’ some sleep now, but—”
“What has been the matter—I couldn’t make out from your letter? Was it an
accident of any kind?”
“Well, sir, I ’ardly know whether I’d better speak about it. Master was very
partickler he should be the one to tell you. But there’s no bones broke—that’s one
thing I’m sure we ought to be thankful—”
“What does the doctor say?” asked Mr Gregory.
They were by this time outside Mr Somerton’s bedroom door, and speaking in
low tones. Mr Gregory, who happened to be in front, was feeling for the handle,
and chanced to run his fingers over the panels. Before Brown could answer, there
was a terrible cry from within the room.
“In God’s name, who is that?” were the first words they heard. “Brown, is it?”
“Yes, sir—me, sir, and Mr Gregory,” Brown hastened to answer, and there was
an audible groan of relief in reply.
They entered the room, which was darkened against the afternoon sun, and Mr
Gregory saw, with a shock of pity, how drawn, how damp with drops of fear, was
the usually calm face of his friend, who, sitting up in the curtained bed, stretched
out a shaking hand to welcome him.
“Better for seeing you, my dear Gregory,” was the reply to the Rector’s first
question, and it was palpably true.
After five minutes of conversation Mr Somerton was more his own man, Brown
afterwards reported, than he had been for days. He was able to eat a more than
respectable dinner, and talked confidently of being fit to stand a journey to
Coblentz within twenty-four hours.
“But there’s one thing,” he said, with a return of agitation which Mr Gregory did
not like to see, “which I must beg you to do for me, my dear Gregory. Don’t,” he
went on, laying his hand on Gregory’s to forestall any interruption—“don’t ask me
what it is, or why I want it done. I’m not up to explaining it yet; it would throw me
back—undo all the good you have done me by coming. The only word I will say
about it is that you run no risk whatever by doing it, and that Brown can and will

show you tomorrow what it is. It’s merely to put back—to keep—something—No; I
can’t speak of it yet. Do you mind calling Brown?”
“Well, Somerton,” said Mr Gregory, as he crossed the room to the door, “I won’t
ask for any explanations till you see fit to give them. And if this bit of business is as
easy as you represent it to be, I will very gladly undertake it for you the first thing
in the morning.”
“Ah, I was sure you would, my dear Gregory; I was certain I could rely on you. I
shall owe you more thanks than I can tell. Now, here is Brown. Brown, one word
with you.”
“Shall I go?” interjected Mr Gregory.
“Not at all. Dear me, no. Brown, the first thing tomorrow morning—(you don’t
mind early hours, I know, Gregory)—you must take the Rector to—there, you
know” (a nod from Brown, who looked grave and anxious), “and he and you will
put that back. You needn’t be in the least alarmed; it’s perfectly safe in the daytime.
You know what I mean. It lies on the step, you know, where—where we put it.”
(Brown swallowed dryly once or twice, and, failing to speak, bowed.) “And—yes,
that’s all. Only this one other word, my dear Gregory. If you can manage to keep
from questioning Brown about this matter, I shall be still more bound to you.
Tomorrow evening, at latest, if all goes well, I shall be able, I believe, to tell you
the whole story from start to finish. And now I’ll wish you good night. Brown will
be with me—he sleeps here—and if I were you, I should lock my door. Yes, be
particular to do that. They—they like it, the people here, and it’s better. Good night,
good night.”
They parted upon this, and if Mr Gregory woke once or twice in the small hours
and fancied he heard a fumbling about the lower part of his locked door, it was,
perhaps, no more than what a quiet man, suddenly plunged into a strange bed and
the heart of a mystery, might reasonably expect. Certainly he thought, to the end of
his days, that he had heard such a sound twice or three times between midnight and
dawn.
He was up with the sun, and out in company with Brown soon after. Perplexing
as was the service he had been asked to perform for Mr Somerton, it was not a
difficult or an alarming one, and within half an hour from his leaving the inn it was
over. What it was I shall not as yet divulge.
Later in the morning Mr Somerton, now almost himself again, was able to make
a start from Steinfeld; and that same evening, whether at Coblentz or at some
intermediate stage on the journey I am not certain, he settled down to the promised
explanation. Brown was present, but how much of the matter was ever really made
plain to his comprehension he would never say, and I am unable to conjecture.

III
This was Mr Somerton’s story:
“You know roughly, both of you, that this expedition of mine was undertaken
with the object of tracing something in connexion with some old painted glass in
Lord D——’s private chapel. Well, the starting-point of the whole matter lies in this
passage from an old printed book, to which I will ask your attention.”
And at this point Mr Somerton went carefully over some ground with which we
are already familiar.
“On my second visit to the chapel,” he went on, “my purpose was to take every
note I could of figures, lettering, diamond-scratchings on the glass, and even
apparently accidental markings. The first point which I tackled was that of the
inscribed scrolls. I could not doubt that the first of these, that of Job—‘There is a
place for the gold where it is hidden’—with its intentional alteration, must refer to
the treasure; so I applied myself with some confidence to the next, that of St John
—‘They have on their vestures a writing which no man knoweth.’ The natural
question will have occurred to you: Was there an inscription on the robes of the
figures? I could see none; each of the three had a broad black border to his mantle,
which made a conspicuous and rather ugly feature in the window. I was nonplussed,
I will own, and, but for a curious bit of luck, I think I should have left the search
where the Canons of Steinfeld had left it before me. But it so happened that there
was a good deal of dust on the surface of the glass, and Lord D——, happening to
come in, noticed my blackened hands, and kindly insisted on sending for a Turk’s
head broom to clean down the window. There must, I suppose, have been a rough
piece in the broom; anyhow, as it passed over the border of one of the mantles, I
noticed that it left a long scratch, and that some yellow stain instantly showed up. I
asked the man to stop his work for a moment, and ran up the ladder to examine the
place. The yellow stain was there, sure enough, and what had come away was a
thick black pigment, which had evidently been laid on with the brush after the glass
had been burnt, and could therefore be easily scraped off without doing any harm. I
scraped, accordingly, and you will hardly believe—no, I do you an injustice; you
will have guessed already—that I found under this black pigment two or three
clearly-formed capital letters in yellow stain on a clear ground. Of course, I could
hardly contain my delight.
“I told Lord D—— that I had detected an inscription which I thought might be
very interesting, and begged to be allowed to uncover the whole of it. He made no
difficulty about it whatever, told me to do exactly as I pleased, and then, having an
engagement, was obliged—rather to my relief, I must say—to leave me. I set to
work at once, and found the task a fairly easy one. The pigment, disintegrated, of

course, by time, came off almost at a touch, and I don’t think that it took me a
couple of hours, all told, to clean the whole of the black borders in all three lights.
Each of the figures had, as the inscription said, ‘a writing on their vestures which
nobody knew’.
“This discovery, of course, made it absolutely certain to my mind that I was on
the right track. And, now, what was the inscription? While I was cleaning the glass I
almost took pains not to read the lettering, saving up the treat until I had got the
whole thing clear. And when that was done, my dear Gregory, I assure you I could
almost have cried from sheer disappointment. What I read was only the most
hopeless jumble of letters that was ever shaken up in a hat. Here it is:

Job. DREVICIOPEDMOOMSMVIVLISLCAVIBASBATAOVT
St John. RDIIEAMRLESIPVSPODSEEIRSETTAAESGIAVNNR
Zechariah. DREVICIOPEDMOOMSMVIVLISLCAVIBASBATAOVT

“Blank as I felt and must have looked for the first few minutes, my
disappointment didn’t last long. I realized almost at once that I was dealing with a
cipher or cryptogram; and I reflected that it was likely to be of a pretty simple kind,
considering its early date. So I copied the letters with the most anxious care.
Another little point, I may tell you, turned up in the process which confirmed my
belief in the cipher. After copying the letters on Job’s robe I counted them, to make
sure that I had them right. There were thirty-eight; and, just as I finished going
through them, my eye fell on a scratching made with a sharp point on the edge of
the border. It was simply the number xxxviii in Roman numerals. To cut the matter
short, there was a similar note, as I may call it, in each of the other lights; and that
made it plain to me that the glass-painter had had very strict orders from Abbot
Thomas about the inscription, and had taken pains to get it correct.
“Well, after that discovery you may imagine how minutely I went over the whole
surface of the glass in search of further light. Of course, I did not neglect the
inscription on the scroll of Zechariah—‘Upon one stone are seven eyes,’ but I very
quickly concluded that this must refer to some mark on a stone which could only be
found in situ, where the treasure was concealed. To be short, I made all possible
notes and sketches and tracings, and then came back to Parsbury to work out the
cipher at leisure. Oh, the agonies I went through! I thought myself very clever at
first, for I made sure that the key would be found in some of the old books on secret
writing. The Steganographia of Joachim Trithemius, who was an earlier
contemporary of Abbot Thomas, seemed particularly promising; so I got that and
Selenius’s Cryptographia and Bacon’s de Augmentis Scientiarum and some more.
But I could hit upon nothing. Then I tried the principle of the ‘most frequent letter’,
taking first Latin and then German as a basis. That didn’t help, either; whether it

ought to have done so, I am not clear. And then I came back to the window itself,
and read over my notes, hoping almost against hope that the Abbot might himself
have somewhere supplied the key I wanted. I could make nothing out of the colour
or pattern of the robes. There were no landscape backgrounds with subsidiary
objects; there was nothing in the canopies. The only resource possible seemed to be
in the attitudes of the figures. ‘Job,’ I read: ‘scroll in left hand, forefinger of right
hand extended upwards. John: holds inscribed book in left hand; with right hand
blesses, with two fingers. Zechariah: scroll in left hand; right hand extended
upwards, as Job, but with three fingers pointing up.’ In other words, I reflected, Job
has one finger extended, John has two, Zechariah has three. May not there be a
numeral key concealed in that? My dear Gregory,” said Mr Somerton, laying his
hand on his friend’s knee, “that was the key. I didn’t get it to fit at first, but after
two or three trials I saw what was meant. After the first letter of the inscription you
skip one letter, after the next you skip two, and after that skip three. Now look at
the result I got. I’ve underlined the letters which form words:

[D]R[E]VI[C]IOP[E]D[M]OO[M]SMV[I]V[L]IS[L]CAV[I]B[A]S
B[A]TAO[V]T
[R]DI[I]EAM[R]L[E]SI[P]VSP[O]D[S]EE[I]RSE[T]T[A]AE[S]G
IA[V]N[N]R
F[T]EEA[I]L[N]QD[P]VAI[V]M[T]LE[E]ATT[O]H[I]OO[N]VM
C[A]A[T].H.Q.E.

“Do you see it? ‘Decem millia auri reposita sunt in puteo in at. . .’ (Ten thousand
[pieces] of gold are laid up in a well in …), followed by an incomplete word
beginning at. So far so good. I tried the same plan with the remaining letters; but it
wouldn’t work, and I fancied that perhaps the placing of dots after the three last
letters might indicate some difference of procedure. Then I thought to myself,
‘Wasn’t there some allusion to a well in the account of Abbot Thomas in that book
the “Sertum”?’ Yes, there was: he built a puteus in atrio (a well in the court). There,
of course, was my word atrio. The next step was to copy out the remaining letters
of the inscription, omitting those I had already used. That gave what you will see on
this slip:

RVIIOPDOOSMVVISCAVBSBTAOTDIEAMLSIVSPDEERSETAEGIANRFEEA
LQDVAIMLEATTHOOVMCA.H.Q.E.

“Now, I knew what the three first letters I wanted were—namely, rio—to
complete the word atrio; and, as you will see, these are all to be found in the first
five letters. I was a little confused at first by the occurrence of two i’s, but very soon
I saw that every alternate letter must be taken in the remainder of the inscription.

You can work it out for yourself; the result, continuing where the first ‘round’ left
off, is this:

‘rio domus abbatialis de Steinfeld a me, Thoma, qui posui
custodem super ea. Gare à qui la touche’.

“So the whole secret was out:

‘Ten thousand pieces of gold are laid up in the well in the court of
the Abbot’s house of Steinfeld by me, Thomas, who have set a
guardian over them. Gare à qui la touche.’

“The last words, I ought to say, are a device which Abbot Thomas had adopted. I
found it with his arms in another piece of glass at Lord D——’s, and he drafted it
bodily into his cipher, though it doesn’t quite fit in point of grammar.
“Well, what would any human being have been tempted to do, my dear Gregory,
in my place? Could he have helped setting off, as I did, to Steinfeld, and tracing the
secret literally to the fountain-head? I don’t believe he could. Anyhow, I couldn’t,
and, as I needn’t tell you, I found myself at Steinfeld as soon as the resources of
civilization could put me there, and installed myself in the inn you saw. I must tell
you that I was not altogether free from forebodings—on one hand of
disappointment, on the other of danger. There was always the possibility that Abbot
Thomas’s well might have been wholly obliterated, or else that someone, ignorant
of cryptograms, and guided only by luck, might have stumbled on the treasure
before me. And then”—there was a very perceptible shaking of the voice here—’I
was not entirely easy, I need not mind confessing, as to the meaning of the words
about the guardian of the treasure. But, if you don’t mind, I’ll say no more about
that until—until it becomes necessary.
“At the first possible opportunity Brown and I began exploring the place. I had
naturally represented myself as being interested in the remains of the abbey, and we
could not avoid paying a visit to the church, impatient as I was to be elsewhere.
Still, it did interest me to see the windows where the glass had been, and especially
that at the east end of the south aisle. In the tracery lights of that I was startled to
see some fragments and coats-of-arms remaining—Abbot Thomas’s shield was
there, and a small figure with a scroll inscribed Oculos habent, et non videbunt
(They have eyes, and shall not see), which, I take it, was a hit of the Abbot at his
Canons.
“But, of course, the principal object was to find the Abbot’s house. There is no
prescribed place for this, so far as I know, in the plan of a monastery; you can’t
predict of it, as you can of the chapter-house, that it will be on the eastern side of
the cloister, or, as of the dormitory, that it will communicate with a transept of the

church. I felt that if I asked many questions I might awaken lingering memories of
the treasure, and I thought it best to try first to discover it for myself. It was not a
very long or difficult search. That three-sided court south-east of the church, with
deserted piles of building round it, and grass-grown pavement, which you saw this
morning, was the place. And glad enough I was to see that it was put to no use, and
was neither very far from our inn nor overlooked by any inhabited building; there
were only orchards and paddocks on the slopes east of the church. I can tell you
that fine stone glowed wonderfully in the rather watery yellow sunset that we had
on the Tuesday afternoon.
“Next, what about the well? There was not much doubt about that, as you can
testify. It is really a very remarkable thing. That curb is, I think, of Italian marble,
and the carving I thought must be Italian also. There were reliefs, you will perhaps
remember, of Eliezer and Rebekah, and of Jacob opening the well for Rachel, and
similar subjects; but, by way of disarming suspicion, I suppose, the Abbot had
carefully abstained from any of his cynical and allusive inscriptions.
“I examined the whole structure with the keenest interest, of course—a square
well-head with an opening in one side; an arch over it, with a wheel for the rope to
pass over, evidently in very good condition still, for it had been used within sixty
years, or perhaps even later, though not quite recently. Then there was the question
of depth and access to the interior. I suppose the depth was about sixty to seventy
feet; and as to the other point, it really seemed as if the Abbot had wished to lead
searchers up to the very door of his treasure-house, for, as you tested for yourself,
there were big blocks of stone bonded into the masonry, and leading down in a
regular staircase round and round the inside of the well.
“It seemed almost too good to be true. I wondered if there was a trap—if the
stones were so contrived as to tip over when a weight was placed on them; but I
tried a good many with my own weight and with my stick, and all seemed, and
actually were, perfectly firm. Of course, I resolved that Brown and I would make an
experiment that very night.
“I was well prepared. Knowing the sort of place I should have to explore, I had
brought a sufficiency of good rope and bands of webbing to surround my body, and
cross-bars to hold to, as well as lanterns and candles and crowbars, all of which
would go into a single carpet-bag and excite no suspicion. I satisfied myself that my
rope would be long enough, and that the wheel for the bucket was in good working
order, and then we went home to dinner.
“I had a little cautious conversation with the landlord, and made out that he
would not be overmuch surprised if I went out for a stroll with my man about nine
o’clock, to make (Heaven forgive me!) a sketch of the abbey by moonlight. I asked
no questions about the well, and am not likely to do so now. I fancy I know as

much about it as anyone in Steinfeld: at least”—with a strong shudder—“I don’t
want to know any more.
“Now we come to the crisis, and, though I hate to think of it, I feel sure, Gregory,
that it will be better for me in all ways to recall it just as it happened. We started,
Brown and I, at about nine with our bag, and attracted no attention; for we managed
to slip out at the hinder end of the inn-yard into an alley which brought us quite to
the edge of the village. In five minutes we were at the well, and for some little time
we sat on the edge of the well-head to make sure that no one was stirring or spying
on us. All we heard was some horses cropping grass out of sight farther down the
eastern slope. We were perfectly unobserved, and had plenty of light from the
gorgeous full moon to allow us to get the rope properly fitted over the wheel. Then
I secured the band round my body beneath the arms. We attached the end of the
rope very securely to a ring in the stonework. Brown took the lighted lantern and
followed me; I had a crowbar. And so we began to descend cautiously, feeling
every step before we set foot on it, and scanning the walls in search of any marked
stone.
“Half aloud I counted the steps as we went down, and we got as far as the thirty-
eighth before I noted anything at all irregular in the surface of the masonry. Even
here there was no mark, and I began to feel very blank, and to wonder if the
Abbot’s cryptogram could possibly be an elaborate hoax. At the forty-ninth step the
staircase ceased. It was with a very sinking heart that I began retracing my steps,
and when I was back on the thirty-eighth—Brown, with the lantern, being a step or
two above me—I scrutinized the little bit of irregularity in the stonework with all
my might; but there was no vestige of a mark.
“Then it struck me that the texture of the surface looked just a little smoother
than the rest, or, at least, in some way different. It might possibly be cement and not
stone. I gave it a good blow with my iron bar. There was a decidedly hollow sound,
though that might be the result of our being in a well. But there was more. A great
flake of cement dropped on to my feet, and I saw marks on the stone underneath. I
had tracked the Abbot down, my dear Gregory; even now I think of it with a certain
pride. It took but a very few more taps to clear the whole of the cement away, and I
saw a slab of stone about two feet square, upon which was engraven a cross.
Disappointment again, but only for a moment. It was you, Brown, who reassured
me by a casual remark. You said, if I remember right:
“‘It’s a funny cross: looks like a lot of eyes.’
“I snatched the lantern out of your hand, and saw with inexpressible pleasure that
the cross was composed of seven eyes, four in a vertical line, three horizontal. The
last of the scrolls in the window was explained in the way I had anticipated. Here
was my ‘stone with the seven eyes’. So far the Abbot’s data had been exact, and, as

I thought of this, the anxiety about the ‘guardian’ returned upon me with increased
force. Still, I wasn’t going to retreat now.
“Without giving myself time to think, I knocked away the cement all round the
marked stone, and then gave it a prise on the right side with my crowbar. It moved
at once, and I saw that it was but a thin light slab, such as I could easily lift out
myself, and that it stopped the entrance to a cavity. I did lift it out unbroken, and set
it on the step, for it might be very important to us to be able to replace it. Then I
waited for several minutes on the step just above. I don’t know why, but I think to
see if any dreadful thing would rush out. Nothing happened. Next I lit a candle, and
very cautiously I placed it inside the cavity, with some idea of seeing whether there
were foul air, and of getting a glimpse of what was inside. There was some foulness
of air which nearly extinguished the flame, but in no long time it burned quite
steadily. The hole went some little way back, and also on the right and left of the
entrance, and I could see some rounded light-coloured objects within which might
be bags. There was no use in waiting. I faced the cavity, and looked in. There was
nothing immediately in the front of the hole. I put my arm in and felt to the right,
very gingerly….
“Just give me a glass of cognac, Brown. I’ll go on in a moment, Gregory….
“Well, I felt to the right, and my fingers touched something curved, that felt—yes
—more or less like leather; dampish it was, and evidently part of a heavy, full
thing. There was nothing, I must say, to alarm one. I grew bolder, and putting both
hands in as well as I could, I pulled it to me, and it came. It was heavy, but moved
more easily than I had expected. As I pulled it towards the entrance, my left elbow
knocked over and extinguished the candle. I got the thing fairly in front of the
mouth and began drawing it out. Just then Brown gave a sharp ejaculation and ran
quickly up the steps with the lantern. He will tell you why in a moment. Startled as
I was, I looked round after him, and saw him stand for a minute at the top and then
walk away a few yards. Then I heard him call softly, ‘All right, sir,’ and went on
pulling out the great bag, in complete darkness. It hung for an instant on the edge of
the hole, then slipped forward on to my chest, and put its arms round my neck.
“My dear Gregory, I am telling you the exact truth. I believe I am now
acquainted with the extremity of terror and repulsion which a man can endure
without losing his mind. I can only just manage to tell you now the bare outline of
the experience. I was conscious of a most horrible smell of mould, and of a cold
kind of face pressed against my own, and moving slowly over it, and of several—I
don’t know how many—legs or arms or tentacles or something clinging to my
body. I screamed out, Brown says, like a beast, and fell away backward from the
step on which I stood, and the creature slipped downwards, I suppose, on to that
same step. Providentially the band round me held firm. Brown did not lose his
head, and was strong enough to pull me up to the top and get me over the edge

quite promptly. How he managed it exactly I don’t know, and I think he would find
it hard to tell you. I believe he contrived to hide our implements in the deserted
building near by, and with very great difficulty he got me back to the inn. I was in
no state to make explanations, and Brown knows no German; but next morning I
told the people some tale of having had a bad fall in the abbey ruins, which, I
suppose, they believed. And now, before I go further, I should just like you to hear
what Brown’s experiences during those few minutes were. Tell the Rector, Brown,
what you told me.”
“Well, sir,” said Brown, speaking low and nervously, “it was just this way.
Master was busy down in front of the ’ole, and I was ’olding the lantern and
looking on, when I ’eard somethink drop in the water from the top, as I thought. So
I looked up, and I see someone’s ’ead lookin’ over at us. I s’pose I must ha’ said
somethink, and I ’eld the light up and run up the steps, and my light shone right on
the face. That was a bad un, sir, if ever I see one! A holdish man, and the face very
much fell in, and larfin’, as I thought. And I got up the steps as quick pretty nigh as
I’m tellin’ you, and when I was out on the ground there warn’t a sign of any person.
There ’adn’t been the time for anyone to get away, let alone a hold chap, and I
made sure he warn’t crouching down by the well, nor nothink. Next thing I hear
master cry out somethink ’orrible, and hall I see was him hanging out by the rope,
and, as master says, ’owever I got him up I couldn’t tell you.”
“You hear that, Gregory?” said Mr Somerton. “Now, does any explanation of that
incident strike you?”
“The whole thing is so ghastly and abnormal that I must own it puts me quite off
my balance; but the thought did occur to me that possibly the—well, the person
who set the trap might have come to see the success of his plan.”
“Just so, Gregory, just so. I can think of nothing else so—likely, I should say, if
such a word had a place anywhere in my story. I think it must have been the
Abbot…. Well, I haven’t much more to tell you. I spent a miserable night, Brown
sitting up with me. Next day I was no better; unable to get up; no doctor to be had;
and, if one had been available, I doubt if he could have done much for me. I made
Brown write off to you, and spent a second terrible night. And, Gregory, of this I
am sure, and I think it affected me more than the first shock, for it lasted longer:
there was someone or something on the watch outside my door the whole night. I
almost fancy there were two. It wasn’t only the faint noises I heard from time to
time all through the dark hours, but there was the smell—the hideous smell of
mould. Every rag I had had on me on that first evening I had stripped off and made
Brown take it away. I believe he stuffed the things into the stove in his room; and
yet the smell was there, as intense as it had been in the well; and, what is more, it
came from outside the door. But with the first glimmer of dawn it faded out, and the
sounds ceased, too; and that convinced me that the thing or things were creatures of

darkness, and could not stand the daylight; and so I was sure that if anyone could
put back the stone, it or they would be powerless until someone else took it away
again. I had to wait until you came to get that done. Of course, I couldn’t send
Brown to do it by himself, and still less could I tell anyone who belonged to the
place.
“Well, there is my story; and, if you don’t believe it, I can’t help it. But I think
you do.”
“Indeed,” said Mr Gregory, “I can find no alternative. I must believe it! I saw the
well and the stone myself, and had a glimpse, I thought, of the bags or something
else in the hole. And, to be plain with you, Somerton, I believe my door was
watched last night, too.”
“I dare say it was, Gregory; but, thank goodness, that is over. Have you, by the
way, anything to tell about your visit to that dreadful place?”
“Very little,” was the answer. “Brown and I managed easily enough to get the
slab into its place, and he fixed it very firmly with the irons and wedges you had
desired him to get, and we contrived to smear the surface with mud so that it looks
just like the rest of the wall. One thing I did notice in the carving on the well-head,
which I think must have escaped you. It was a horrid, grotesque shape—perhaps
more like a toad than anything else, and there was a label by it inscribed with the
two words, ‘Depositum custodi’.”[9]
[9] “Keep that which is committed to thee.”

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