Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

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 12^mi 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 lxxii^do, incarnationis vero
Dominiæ mdxxix^o.

“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 obed^t Serv^t        
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:

“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]SB[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]GIA[V]N[N]R
F[T]EEA[I]L[N]QD[P]VAI[V]M[T]LE[E]ATT[O]H[I]OO[N]VMC[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:

RVIIOPDOOSMVVISCAVBSBTAOTDIEAMLSIVSPDEERSETAEGIANRFEEALQDVAIMLEATTHOOVMCA.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.”